Tues September 15th 1992
The fish sucking my finger, sleek tight throat I'm stroking. It looks up out of the water a broad round head. That after Saturday night in her new apartment. Feeling to touch her, a sadness came and stopped me. What is this sadness? Ellie it's a memory says the book. That she's a nice body and I'm not. Behind the sadness is fury that I have to be this shamed ugly thing. They all say - they lie and deny - that everybody has something. That leaves me furious, what do I want, Trudy's open-mouthed acknowledgement - that happened to you. Tell me about hiding. Hiding. That happened to me. She has never acknowledged it, comprehended it. She leaves it out, covers it. What did I see, a motion, an inward shrinking in the right side of the dark inside my head. It shrinks and is aware. Pulls itself close, stays watching from cover. Draws itself into a doorway while I pass.
The way the body is all warm and myself except for the limb like a grey branch, not dead, feeling, but what it feels is aching cold.
Release from shame - what I know about it is only the moment with Michael.
She has never acknowledged it, leaves it out, covers it. Is that Mary? There was no one to imagine it. That's why I say it's false that everybody has it. Mary acknowledged neither my beauty nor my wreck. Does the way she ignored Judy connect?
16
Scared dream that she's smoking again - you said you wouldn't! Frightened it means she can't keep her word.
Friday 18
Not eating. I don't have my habits for vigor, coffee and tea and congee, cafés. Impulses for delicious things in Greek, Indian, Persian restaurants. Morning tea. Dull ache, slow mind. Rowen's four days past, Rob today, garden weeded in the centre, stuff put away, bike fixed, car washed, house cleaned, plumber come, we're back a week. Now take up the thesis for Monday night. Want to leave the trip behind before I've seen it. PRC slides all didn't work, none of the lit shadow I imagined creeping in, none of the life subtlety of the willows. A couple of rubylit rockpile pictures from Rumsey.
In front of me Graham Thomas's yellow, a nodding cluster of five young enough all at the same time to have the apricot intensity of centre. Wife of Bath floating. Nasturtiums orange, one red poppy with some pink oregano and many dark blue-purple stalks. Why say these colors - they reach me. Not much else. I'm reducing myself to the dim pain I've often lived above these past ? years. And been driven by in unconsidered ways. Alright dim pain let me see if I can learn what you signal.
Monday 21st
Three months = 14 weeks. 6 chapters. Chapter every two weeks. What else I want - to be physically fixed - to be steady peaceful interested focused in off-time - baths of love - real knitting-up of the stuff I'm working on. If I get it done this term, defend it and teach next term while finishing the video. Meantime set up funding both for doc and other films. Set up doc in growth simulation films. Run a course in them. Have time in the red and white house or/and somewhere up by Lytton. Optical printer stuff. Then I can have summer on UI.
A note of Louie in red yesterday, black and red. A cautious woman looking at Canaletto, her Venice, with small pink fingers tightly lightly sprung just touching the pages. Beautiful and far. And Ellie's crying because she doesn't want Louie to go away but she wants David McAra/Carter, who at Larry's party looked straight at me with black eyes and a dry line down his jaw next to his mouth.
-
Grad seminar. Wonderful beginning said Ray. I stare asking how, there's he plumped and pink with his shy holding-back eyes and bold jumping-forward of the beard. (And how is it with David - his eyes are fearless, I can't stand in front of them without wanting to sit down staring. And his mouth doesn't get pushed forward, it's practical, for definite messages and white smiles. Strength in reserve. "Oh Ellie. I won't be at your presentation, I wanted to be but I have to go ---." "Awwww" I say uncarefully. I'm in surprise, haven't got ready a way to handle talking on about something while plunked down I suppose joyfully, filled up with the white light of his face. Is that how it is? Niaserie. That too. A social smile drawing the upper lip up in under his bony Scotch nose. Fascinated but not troubled. Next week maybe I'll see enough to know something, so far I know not much: a light dry bright spirit. A girl man, no, more like a curled dry breeze. He didn't have to come tell me he wouldn't be there, is what's making me happy.
Bright and dark.
Weds 23rd
What's on the table. Bright and dark. Grey hawk and deep kid. Physical energy. Winter, house and clothes. Louie. Film life, Luke. Rowen. Garden. About people.
Space and grain. Binaries and column fault. Dreams and visual simula and 'seeing.'
-
[from here on down patchy records of sessions with Louie's book]
From Weds
Shoulder. Accupuncture? Pinched nerve?
Solar. Pressure, necessary to discipline in love and studies.
Kind discipline, some changing. Tongue or eye or so. In between regularly. 5 hrs. Transitions carefully in the beginning. Losing balance. Jump back to not having both, forward to not having both.
Good reason. If you take fright because she might, it happens. Many reasons. Color, memory, what's hidden with Louie. Fantasy. Memory of desire, early fantasy.
"What makes the desire?" 'Projection, something you wanted to be so you could be seen in a certain way." "Animus projection?" "Not necessarily the same as animal but it could be. Animal to mean spirit of a certain kind."
"What was it about Ken?" "Dark eyes that can see into dark ones . I stimulate movement predominantly. It was mainly that you started making what beauty would be to you. He had the combinations you wanted to make, what's unseen and what's seen, lively spirit, beautiful face. Beautiful face showing what's hidden, yes, it's still your making."
"Projection?" "Also decision."
"Why am I crying?" "That you had a beautiful face and a lively spirit and you recognized his. A lively thinking in a lovely face."
Intuiting actual future? "What do you make if I say yes or no? What do you drop if I say maybe? Where do I lie if I say I don't know? Not a notion of future but of the past. Keep on marking it then. It's like this, what you intuit in the present helps for past future and present, but doesn't make the future although it makes future desire."
"Can you touch?" "Yes." "You like tricky ones as if you don't know about structures ... some that you know of, lots that you don't."
"What do you get out of it?" "What you do, bringing inside out, outside in."
The thing, source of lying and very hurtful. "Oh there's so much, ask some." Lying ... "There were lyings about it which you couldn't do with touch." Want it and not want it.
Get it out of system? "It doesn't work but relieves pain with illusion, not in the long run . You can have good sex whenever you want it ..."
Jam. "It did age you much faster, nerves, yes. But you can have all that you had before her, except for youth, naturally." Fix nerves too, meticulous work.
"The way it started off tonight, there's much in it ... nervous systems and sensitivities hold hands while they fall asleep and before they wake up."
Thurs 24th
"When did this hardness start, the moment?"
"You are jumping over a bush on your right. Walk a few steps to the left and jump over the bush which was on your left. A goal. Not to compare bushes. The philosophy of loss. Belief of loss. Yes yes unbelief in its nature. Goat, look at what's before you, what do you have, a bush. Which way, right? A bush. You don't lose the first bush because you're jumping the second. You jump because you want to count them, feel them underneath you, then to say I've lost what I had. My dear you feel it in its real place, you think that its pattern is the pattern of all moving joy. You feel there can't be joy without loss. The goat jumps over to say it's over but the bush is growing where it stands. The white goat who is sometimes silver has an expression in the centre of its eyes."
"What is the true nature of loss that I should believe in?"
- "Should.
- True.
- I."
- True.
What is the nature of loss that one could believe in ... It is that when the goat panics it looks just off the bushes, the centre of the eye which is like a window thinks it has lost its bushes because it's not seeing them. Needs a small twitch of nerves, message from the pattern to say they're there. Why didn't you follow through on the expression in the centre eye. Not lost, scared. That it's yours.
Where is what I will lose? Other ways of asking from the centre of where you look from: what is growing on my left, what is growing on my right, can I move my eyes, can I turn around, can I lift the look up. Is something growing underneath me. Do clouds grow. Can I say color grows from white to silver.
You stand there. You are white sometimes silver. You jump over. You think of a goat thinking about you. It's called resistance if you can understand auras and not goats. Remember animal. Slit of the eye. Razor blade. Cut and blood stings. Finger. Touch.
Touch, feeling, touching the feeling, remembering touching the feeling, feeling remembering touching the feeling - cut. It's cut, stings, loss is trying to remember. Remembering loss is trying to remember it. You are not jealous of the photographs, you are jealous of remembering the touch."
"Yes."
"You are finding. Don't frighten it away. Jumping is a mask of hiding again.
When you lost your early life you had to hide, is it true? Hiding what the eye centre said. Loss, helplessness. Hiding it with pride. You are not confused. The emotion is not remembering that touch.
Losing mobility and not almost everything else, but the baby who then maybe was almost everything else. But also there was much left to go to.
Feel your way through as you are. You know more about it than you know.
Louie is feeling it."
[diagram of four kinds of energetic organization labeled LW, LM, EW, EM for love woman, love man, * woman, * man]
In these days what's touched me:
"It was mainly that you started making what beauty would be to you - the combinations you wanted to make, what's seen and what's unseen, beautiful face showing what's hidden, yes - remember nervous systems and sensitivities hold hands while they fall asleep.
You jump because you want to count them, feel them underneath you, then say I've lost what I had. You think that its pattern is the pattern of all moving joy. The white goat who is sometimes silver has an expression in the centre of its eyes. Where is what I will lose?
Feeling remembering touching the feeling - cut. You are jealous of remembering the touch." "Yes. Loss, helplessness. Hiding it with pride."
"What's hidden in Louie. A man?" "Yes." Sharp fear and sadness. Oh why. Alone with a man. "Does he love me?" "He loved you first." "Why?" "He saw you were full of love."
She grieves because she wants to make love - not that I should touch her. An overwhelming love she wants me to listen to, to know her.
Ego hurts solar plex. "What does it want that my nature doesn't?" "To impress fathers." "What does solar plex want?" "It wants you to notice." "What, pain?" "It's never-ending."
Twelfth day fasting. Empty it seems - nearly. Smelling food. Looking at people eating. Have cried instantly, like the sun. Believe there's a turn in my time. Like to feel how much space there is around my teeshirt in my jeans.
25
This morning Luke crashing upstairs with a female, loud laugh, turn on the taps, the two of them sitting in the tub giggling. What shall I do. Wait and stew, spoil the morning? No I'll tackle it. She doesn't turn around, a juicy freckled back. He's just having a bawth. "Think about it." Almost speechless. I'm not going to explain. Leave them with the curtain open. Smell of booze in the hall. Hostile whispers, "She ..." The rest of it's suspended.
Weak and dim not eating. Starting work with late August 1988. I catch Rob, grieve my garden, am on Saturna with Louie, reading Chaos for the first time. Aphrodite and brain currents.
Our bodies are profoundly aware. What is astonishing is that our culture encourages us to think of our bodies as just another machine or material object.
Eating is like accepting a gift or learning how to take a compliment, open to the pleasure of receiving.
29
I'm at a big gathering talking to Dave across a low wall, Priest Peter is touching a strip of skin at my waist, though he has his head turned talking to someone and is pretending not. I knock his arm with my elbow, again, Get off me. Go into the centre of the space and sit next to Dave on a bucket. Ask whether religion came to him early. Suddenly imagining hearing his voice singing hymns next to me in church. There's a bit more and then something like a moment of being cut off, left sitting. I go to a folding chair empty at the end of a row, talk to the woman next to me. Like Dorothy Connell. She had noticed me after him. "He's an effete bachelor." I wake.
- Had he felt me in the meantime
- In what way (pc)
- He is (pc)
- Exclusion
- Does he feel me romantically
- Is he used to all the women fancying him
- Does that mean I shd wait for him to make the first move
- Is he an effete bachelor no
- Is his friend his lover no
- Elusive evasive with women
- Worth being friends with
- What would be in it for me breaking of strength
- Structure of enchantment with his type (silence)
- Structure of being happy with Louie no
- His energy is entirely oriented toward men
- Then why do women like him pleasure to look at him
- Get at the energy held by his image
- Will he make a move if I leave it to him
- Is Priest Peter heterosexual
- Afraid of it
- Anyone else in the group more worth paying attention to no
- If I showed him myself would he be interested
- In me as a man no
- Physically too no
- Is it true that I feel him romantically but not sexually
- Am I still going on with Rob no
- Better sex with L no
- No sex at all
- Will that work for me physically (silence)
- What will be the effect of having none at all (2s)
- Does my ego want it no
- No sex with anyone, effect on relation with L (3p)
- Work together on the video
- Go on forever without sex
- Won't that make me age much faster
- Is there an alternative no
- Why is the sexual part of r with Rob over (Kc)
- Because I denied her Michael? no
- Something to do with living as an artist again
- Love energy into art no
- How to take it (As)
- But will I still be able to get to that full heart and realness
- What do you think of Louie's book turn for the better
- Is it alright to trust it
- What is going to be L's feeling toward me in this time (8c)
- Why judgment
- Decide to withdraw
- Because she's got what she wants
- Where will that leave me (5c)
- Does she know she's going to do this no
- Where will it leave her diligent careful deliberate
- Should I fight her
- Use D to hurt her
- If I just let her go will I be seriously damaged
- Is her book helping her defeat me (silence)
- Is it about defeating me no
- Is it about outgrowing me
- Could she also go on as my companion forever no
- What does she want to go on to (Qw)
- Her own success as an artist no
- Jamila?
- And them?
- Then why pick me first (Qc)
- To help her to get to her gift of vision
- What should be my attitude to her in the face of this (6s)
- Figure out how to get over the difficulty
- What is the difficulty (emperor)
- Knowing how to control it?
- Will I still have love and work even if she leaves no
- In what way (pc)
The seminar last night. Dangers of such to such as I. Imprinting with him and her and him and him and him and him and him and him. The way I see Sam noticing me watch how the others are looking at Ray. The way she said You guys will have to make a date. The way I said You're in my neighbourhood, my phone number is on this thing.
How do the others look at Ray. Fascinated respect. Paul Wong's shine down in the corner. Dave Sturdee's nice child look. Him too, the way he said 'happiness.' Mikhail's brutality, a tone I could call arrogant but what more do I know about it. A tension at the back of the neck that draws down the jaw and must have an impressor function, 'look down on.' It might make him a quarter of an inch taller, it says ich, the military drawing-up. Lou, story of his friend who believes this world unreal and puts up with contempt because the real is beyond, said twice, It's not funny, she got into real trouble because of it. He spoke only after I said I'd been in a political community with a solipsistic idealist. Priest Peter laughing, he got it, I thought, but what he said suddenly was Which Ellie is this? It reached me but I shelved it going on to say I thought of myself as his friend but he didn't think of himself as mine, I was just part of his dream. And then when Dave was going on, Can you trust a perspectivist? Do their epistemological positions prevent them loving and trusting each other?, I say You can't really trust an idealist because they may be willing to kill a part of themselves. That would be where you'd have to attack this, says Dave. Paul, crossing: Is he still alive? He is but not all his friends are.
D himself in a couch by himself, propping and dropping his bare hairy skinny legs. Something manly in the light self-loyal way he bears himself, and in his voice, but a girl too, his pigtail and the personal spark in his eyes. The intimacy of his eyes, the way he comes inside with them, saying Here I am. (Not Here you are.) (Mine were saying Here you are.)
- What's going on indecision
- About D
- Am I going to choose him
- Do I have the option
- Does it mean giving up my growth
- Then why would I choose it (hierophant)
- Which of those meanings (Kc)
- Emotional intoxication
- What if I gave him up (emperor)
- Would it be better for me if I chose Louie
- In what sense (3c)
- What would it give me if I chose him skill in material affairs
- What am I giving up if I choose him (10s)
- If I chose her do I get the end of delusion
- What does it give me if I chose her (Kp) friendly steady reliable married man
- I become a husband?
- What am I giving up if I chose her skill in material affairs
- A chance to be healthy and do things in the world
- Is he capable of really loving me no
- Am I capable of really loving him
- Does choosing her mean going on without joy
- About D
30
Crisis. Because I spent yesterday 'with' D, Louie was in so bad a state she had to leave yoga halfway, couldn't follow the meeting at Co-op [Radio], got a nosebleed and called me to take her home. Lay down and sobbed that she can't handle it, she doesn't understand anything, she feels crazy. I'm alright until I realize it's because I didn't tell her about inviting him to phone, or else just because I was working with his paper. Then I'm in a rage. "Why isn't it coercion? 'If you don't ignore him I'll fall apart.'"
We try the book. Get confused in two senses of 'choosing her'. Choosing her in the moment is being patient with her feeling, not taking it personally, feeling her feeling her feeling. Choosing her absolutely is giving up the sense of possibility of something new - what she says she does.
Imagine if panics have to do with recurrence of something suppressed. Then I bring back to her an interest in a real him. Then when she threatens Jam, them, Michael (wells), then when she panics, she brings my fright of choosing. Resistance it says is being kept from working openly by the fear that what you fear is true.
"An ordeal, the sacrifice of ego." But meaning what? The instinct for what keeps me healthy, effective and lively? Or what the propaganda says, an unnecessary fear?
- Is this basically a power struggle between me and L
(silence)
- Power struggle is part but it's basically about freeing ourselves no
- Basically about Jam
- It's about L wanting to go to Jam
- L trying to get Jam's interest
- Why does this seem incredible to me speed
- What does she want from Jam valor
- Is it about Jam wanting to get even with me
- What is she offering L victory after strife
- What should I do about it (Knc)
- Get her together with Michael?
- She wants to feel the way she felt living in Jam's house no
- She wants to move on because she's done what she can with me
- Am I in danger
- What's my danger exclusion
- I don't understand (Knc)
- Is my best strategy to leave her no
- What's my best strategy victory after strife
- To win no
- Power struggle is part but it's basically about freeing ourselves no
2 October
[with Joyce]
The black cap: "Sitting on top of her keeping her head warm, squeezing her, making her feel me the whole time, a tough knit, not pure wool, some synthetic material which makes sure I don't get lax and loose. I can be pulled away in a minute and get lost, I'm the most important thing to make sure her heat doesn't get lost."
The tweak: "I'm a sharp little bright thing, I have an edge, a sharp edge and a cutting edge, I don't go away, I push up under the diaphragm, I flow, I'm something mysterious and alarming, sometimes. I wasn't always there, I snuck up on her, after a while she had to notice. I'm saying, You have to find out what I am." "What are you?" "That's for me to know and for you to find out." School kids saying it. ("Did you hear how young your voice is?")
"Shall we go to cases?" "Why not?" The amazing rage when L goes beleidicht. His. He wants to control something. The child melts into self pity. He feels it as coercion.
"Feel the quality of the rage, don't give it out, be with it. She should feel the quality of the self pity. You can work out some kind of agreement."
And rage when I feel she wants to stop me getting that from men. "Feel the original grief of not getting it where you should have. Your parents were duds, your mother more than your father I think" (looking at me sideways to see if I'll buy this). "Men with breasts who give you something you can't afford to get from women."
5
Sitting beside him during sad worried Mark's paper on pragmatism in non-ethics, I couldn't see him, except for his hands, with red knuckles (he's the kind of dark that has a ruddy base not a yellow-brown the way I do), a silver ring, a watch, a bracelet; his thigh, new black denim; his grandfather's dress shoes brown oxfords with scalloped seams, worn with grey work socks. He asked a question, leaned forward, his voice with its double layer like two voices superposed. Eventually I felt it and it was sadness. As if the wish can't come without its disappointment - that wish. Keith Jackson. And when I felt it he turned so he was sitting with his elbow on the back of the seat behind me. He wants to say he's making his story as he goes, there is no fact. Is there a story he's wanting to make? He's floating in a sea he knows unknown. A neon eel lighting what he lights and no more, with some phosphorescent delay. What does it wake. What does it wake? A suffering power. She said find it where it was. I say, to find it where it was I have to take it where it is. Why else would I love to be with the thought. Like holding a photograph. But you taught me the valor it costs. I've been too proud.
You. What to say. Accountable. I can give you an account of structure, I can be accountable for structure, but the account of structure doesn't amount to saying I'm not moved. My account has to be that I promise to notice what I can.
6
Our photos. Does seeing beautiful together cost that amount of pain? Wouldn't I be willing if I knew it?
As if I'm deciding Louie must have Michael and I must bear it.
8
- Petrified.
- The possibility of being far wrong.
- The possibility of not knowing. The bowl of bone.
- The possibility of knowing the above.
- Wanting to hold onto what might make feeling.
- Panic concealed, cealed with a ceiling.
- The possibility of being far wrong.
-
Possibility of having been far wrong.
Not understanding.
"Knowledge concealed of standing under." "Under what?" "Under the ceiling. It's outside." "Outside what? Where else does one stand?" "Outside. Through the new door into the open." "Are you part of the new door?" "Yes we all are. The old one's back. And the outside, blue sky." "Freedom?" "Its ways."
"Not of heart stopping, the opposite." "Is my heart going to start?" "If the seal is broken, start more." "Is the seal a physical barrier?" "No." "Is the brain physical?" "The brain is not only physical but it doesn't change question and answer."
"Yes a set way - gives and takes pain equally, that's what they overlook, don't look at." "An organization in the brain meant to avoid pain?" "I don't know what it's meant to be or. Shrinks and philosophers and others. A set way in the brain."
"... thesis to write." "A hard line on that. You are escaping what will come back to you. What is at hand. What are you holding? This is very hard. Louie is now feeling this. If you talk to me together you have to see each other standing around my circle of stones together. I cannot ignore you or some of you. It's both of you and your independent well-being."
"What am I not holding? Would it help L and be bearable to me for her to be lovers with Michael?" "It will help her to feel welcome and in the body. It will only be bearable to you if you're willing to bear it. Would it help you and be bearable to L if you are wanting to be lovers with D?" "The wanting seems to help me. To feel and hope and hope to feel." "You're ignoring half the question. Do you believe you can feel without him? Do you understand the danger you are in? No Louie don't withdraw."
"I'm in danger of losing Louie? For the sake of a phantom?" "Start with the first question. You're in danger of losing what you're looking for. You my dear could find him less bright and dark than her. It's you who's bright and dark. I'm sad when I say this. There's more but I'll wait. Take turns."
L: I'm overwhelmed. Nothing fantastic about it.
What must I do as if instant relief.
There are options.
E: "The thought of cutting off that feeling makes me so sad."
"What feeling?"
"Being a soul and loving. Loving from the centre of the soul. Having these things together with a man's arms and shoulders. - Would it be bearable to Louie?"
"Apparently not. The question you don't want to face."
"No I don't."
"Then you can't expect her to do it all by herself."
"I suspect he isn't actually up for it, so then I could have the feeling without anything actually happening."
"It's your choice."
"Is it Louie's too? Is it Louie's turn?"
"No can't you see. (It has been for a while.)"
[to L] "She says her cards say it's not going to be physical but you've known it's what she's wanted. What do you want?"
"To hurt her back."
"You are not in what she fears to have cut, she says and you feel."
"I know she is more bright and dark than he is but my feeling goes where it does."
"As long as you don't imagine it doesn't go away."
"Of course it goes away."
"You want hers not to."
"But it will/does. And if I cut off the longing it comes back somewhere else."
"It's true. It's also true for what you cut in this process. Also holding Louie wondering how we will do it."
"What do you think about the idea about Michael?"
"Maybe. Separation is needed. I'm not sure whether he is in it. A separation knowing it might have Michael in it and accepting it even if you don't find arms in a man."
"You drive a hard bargain. I think it does have M in and you're not telling me."
"There are too many factors."
(Angry) "Not knowing what will happen with D. That too. I suspect this is a plan to make me lose in all ways."
"Whose plan."
"Louie's."
"To preserve an essence of self, idea of separation is from all our sources."
Wait and see. Who waits to see what. You are not waiting.
Does it have to be the core please?
E: Please don't go away from me and take all your love and knowledge and perception and beauty away forever because I want to feel what I feel for him and for others who look like him.
L: Please don't stop feeling and seeing what's here because you're feeling something somewhere else and don't take away the possibilities of finding things here that you don't expect.
-
[to E] "'David.' 'Orchard coordinator.' Use the right name." "It makes something possible even though it's not complete." "You will pay for the confusion. Like sharpening a pencil. You want it through this time."
-
[to L] "Pass the first cherry tree. Yoga does that. You want to make it pass this time. I'm wanting to start you although it's not the beginning. Pass the first cherry tree. It's for you to decide how fast we will move. It's a picture to hold your hand. Separate enough. If you can talk to Ellie when you can't bear it. Don't know about Michael. For now you will see movies together which you will remember forever how that is between you."
-
"It was heartbroken when I felt David McAra doesn't exist." "He has always existed equally to now. You are sad because it's warning against projecting him onto someone else for then you can miss both of them." "Both the one it's projected onto and the one in me?" "Yes." "I want to know about the one in me." "If the one in you is projected it won't work out. Then it breaks the one in you, for example he could start fighting with you or hurting you because the new one does. Unprojected he has your heart at interest." "What is it that makes me need to project it then?" "Desire. The love in you."
9
Crying in the past two days and this morning. What do I know. Early Saturday, blue dawn, I'm taking a hard way. I'm going to suffer Louie with Michael, the ego in Louie will stop loving me when I don't contain her, I'll be without sweet kissing and sexual joy it says forever, I'm alone, my great love and longing I will find was always for a phantom, there is no David McAra who will look at me with black bright eyes.
"They say I am somehow the spirit of the one I'm looking for. I don't understand."
"Feeling is bright and dark, the inside of the body is. What does it mean to project it?" "I feel this because you are it, not I feel this because I am it." "Am what?" "This soul." "Then what is it in my days if I don't project it? I am what I feel. I'm alone but a soul. Is that right?"
"Then what is my right relation to any who look like my feeling?" "Separation." "But if I'm feeling my feeling what do I do with desire? Is it nothing but hunger from now on? Is hunger its own food?"
-
"Yes and it's full moon. Pearl and ivory. See it tonight. Then look at its picture, will you. How long have you been waiting for this cry?" "Years I guess." "And it's been waiting for you but can you see what it's come with." "It seems to be a hard road." "You're starting with the feet where it's hard and solid. It's also full moon and it's still coming so we don't know what it's come without. What are you believing into crying, what is its hills swelling. Write down later, it's easy to follow."
You do not know what lies ahead of time. Yet. That butterfly I flapped.
A large open hope not a fixed one.
Fixed on her.
You're angry at it!
- Can I bear it now
- Is L using her book to get things her own way
- How is D going to feel me moon
- Dangerous
- What danger (2w)
- What does he want from a woman (3s)
- Something to do with his mother
- Did his mother leave him
- How can I help him (Qs)
- To find his mourning
- Should I tell him about David McAra etc no
- Why not (Qc)
- Considerations having to do with L
- I should use my brains and feel what he wants
- Should I let him know I like him no
- Leave myself out of it and be of service to him like Tim suggests
- What should I do with my projection (Kw)
- I should investigate a manhood in me
- How do I find it (fool)
- Venturesome quest?
- Like LG writing The dispossessed
- Should I do it by writing
- Should I write about David McAra
- Is it true that Louie's man does not love me
- What's he like (Knw)
- Who does he love (Aw)
- Michael?
- Being powerful
- Gay?
- What should I do about sex (9p)
- I'm finished with sex
- Why liberation
- But I don't want to be done with sweet love and magnetism (5c)
- What does liberation give me instead (As)
- I'm sad if I don't have that any more (Qs)
- I should mourn? no
- You're telling me I am mourning
- It's because I'm too old
- If I don't have sex anymore I can't be controlled by the young
- If I don't have sex anymore I'll get ugly no
- But will I still want it
- What should I do with wanting it (emperor)
- I feel like the lightness and joy will go out of my life (Ap)
- I want to know what I'll get in exchange (Qc)
- My own gift of vision no
- Get to stay with L
- But she'll get to have sex! (emperor)
- Is she worth giving up sex for
- Why?! (6c)
- Is she going to get involved with Michael
- That will make me want to leave her (silence)
- What do you want me to be (3s)
- Heartbroken no
- Separated
- From L no
- From what (justice) feeling things have to be fair
- I don't understand balance in the midst of change
- How shall I handle it when she does (world)
- I don't understand balance in the midst of change
- Will you help me no
- Why do you say that (lovers)
- Say more (knp)
- Rob?
- What about him (4w)
- You want me to go back to him and not have sex?
- And be a friend to him
- And then will you help me
- -
- Will L stop loving me if I take this road
- Then we will see our true relation
- Is that what you mean by liberation
- Will I be glad to be free
- Is L using her book to get things her own way
13th Tuesday
It said to sit every day, see pictures. But it sticks I say. It says then you have to move. That was what I needed.
The way I'm not writing these days, as if I don't have fine fluid speed in my brain. Coffee is it? The kind of time I'd like later, detail.
I saw water below, the sort of below I might see from a small abrupt hill. A patch like heavy satin, grey. Go into it. Alright there I am floating on the surface looking down into green light undersea. What's here. A bit of red coral. And? Nothing. I have to move. Alright. Bit of white. Nothing. So swim. A round big rock on the left, that's all. The prow of a wooden rowboat. Get into it. Maybe it will go somewhere. Not really. Go on. Want to go up. The sort of land that's like one rock, flat, gently round. Warm. WARM.
Stand naked in the sun, heat, such good heat under my soles. Dark brown rock, white remnants of barnacle attachments. Lie down and take in the heat. Leave a wet figure print evaporating. Go UP. Rise with my arms stretched. Feeling the sun still. Turn. Down. Cut through the green under sea. Now? Up through again. What land. I see pink sand. Where is it in relation to the rock rim? Inland. This way. Doesn't matter. Walk. Covered with sand, sugared over, the whole body and face, even hair. Walk.
I'd like to be a man's body. My chest feels different. The way I hold my head, the distance from the ground. Walking in this body I like sugared over with a skin of sand. The man wants to stop, squat down. Bending his back round. He becomes a rock with its warm brown skin. But the rock has an inside where it's black. It's open. Like being in a person not a body. What should I do, go down through a passage. Unclear. Steps. Side. Warm. Maybe it's cold. I'm cold. Coming into a chamber with warm water in a pool. Lie down in the water. My head's on a rock pillow. I know where this is but the sense of rest is not symbolic. I could sleep here anytime. Man's body and woman's body. Is there someone here to touch? Uncertain.
Go on. Up. Straight up, very far up, looking down on a simple earth. I'll be a transparent body now, I'll be a body without a body. Arc backwards and dive, the arcing motion very certain, this is what I must do. Down into the sea where it's deep. And circle around and lie in the water looking up at the silver undersurface moving. The way it's moving, I want to go lie against it and have the silver undulations touch me all along the front of my body. Like making love. And then lie in the interface so I'm just on the line, have it running through me. And come up through afloat in a bed of silver light looking out at the sun. Smiling.
And went into the kitchen. Louie burst into crying about how I don't like her cooking. I knew what to do. It's from another time. But she wants her own journey. (She can write that one. Ribbons horizontal billowing. Rhythms extracted from train sounds. A thorn tree that reappears. Someone looking out a window in a compartment. She looking from a window in the corridor, holding its bars. Nights on the roof of the train. Cool metal, warm wind, the great arch of stars.)
Lying hearing it there are moments I see the images I like best, the black and silver, superclear autonomous and single ones. A man's head. Something else.
And then she wants sex. (Night before, and morning.) She'll touch herself. I say no, tell me the story. Dubious. Ask the book, I say. Book says it's a good idea. "Tell me about the fires." She's shy to. "Do you know where they are?" "In this breast and wherever my hand is." The heel of the palm planing over hip, ribs, over and around, breasts. And there too. "Tell me." "There's something going in where nothing is going in. A rhythm. It's there all the time. When I go there I find it." "What happens to the fire when it goes in." "It melts." Uh. "It's waves." I'm the waves, she's the swell, she says. "I'm tied up tight with seaweed. I'm tied up very tight." That one comes back. "A fish is nibbling. It's very hungry." That's an instruction I can follow. She's hung backwards over my hip, arched. Tied up very tight with seaweed. I can reach to get into her but I want to get at the little log under her skin next to the clit.
And now. What's happening these days. Some of what I want. I'm a righter body. Sleek skin over firm bone. Things I'm not doing - drinking coffee, buying newspapers, watching TV, touching myself, fucking Rob or intending to, eating wheat, being furious with Louie, defending myself, writing journal. Things I am doing: five hours of work a day, yoga too, going to films with L, accepting she can do it with Michael, accepting that I'll learn new ways and be changed, believing her book, crying, cleaning house, doing what the book says, walking around in the jacket Luke gave me, breaking dishes, telling the truth, having pangs about D, feeling mild and compliant, feeling very sore, being interested, driving the car, buying food carefully, junking some but less, talking to the cards. (Yesterday took pictures of L in her dark blue singlet, ivory arms, pale grey light, black hair, focusing on the fine lines next to her eyes.) Being patient. Telling L to ask her book.
There are things I should say here. Should I be fighting for my old self? Who was fat and pink and could write and fucked and fought. This is like the fasting self. Passive. Not altogether. And not in protest all the time under the fat pink self. I like the grief. I like feeling the book knows what's happening. I like to feel I can risk my nightmares and there'll be help in them, so I don't have to control myself into control forever. I like Louie being able to learn. I like working on being less sick. I like her clean warm house. The lace grass at the bay window. The way she's piled Valhalla rocks. The small of her grass basket. The way I can love her gifts when I feel mine coming back. That Laiwan and Luke are with us. The garden's rusty shabby russet-yellow resting look. Mauve and coral dogwood leaves. Having new streets to park in. The graduate students' gentle dinner and having new folks. I like the book itself, its style and kindness. I like seeing the difference between it and ego. Louie's body, the way I never have enough of her breasts, and that she isn't bored. The way we are going into ways of speaking where we can focus nearer. Am I too superstitious to say this? - The way she loves me. Est-ce que je t'aime? Oui.
- aphrodite's garden volume 15: 1992 september-november
- work & days: a lifetime journal project