| aphrodite's garden volume 17 part 1 - 1993 may-june | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
When you just observe the delusion, you have your true mind, your calm, peaceful mind. When you start to cope with it you will be involved with delusion. The large mind in which we must have confidence is something which is always with you, always on your side. The mind which is always on your side is not just your mind, it is universal mind, always the same, not different from another's mind. [Krishnamurti I think] 11 May 1993 Wanting to begin again - beginning so badly - but what is it? Sharp pain that holds me with itself so that I walked to the wharf and didn't see the sky - pain that names what - her and him. There is one thing that would turn it into joy and energy. Pain is my sheep dog and keeps me in bounds - 14th This week the garden - namaste, namaste - two Hindu boys from Nepal not wanting to do the sort of work peasants do at home. I'll shame them into it. But then it is not so much shaming as teaching and encouraging. Hold the spade straight up, like this, then give a strong kick, like this. When I take up the pick they stand and stare. Go on doing what you're doing. I see it is a matter of taking charge. We end well with the triangle dug and mulched. Are you proud of your work? I'm proud of mine. After the rain two days of such strength of sun that the plants have boiled up to fill their beds. Zephérine Drouhin has boiled into bloom. There's yellow white and blue, camas, bugle, the two Asian roses, sweet cicely, broom, celadon, primula, white and blue columbine, jacob's ladder - purple johnny-jump-ups, geum orange - pinks and mauves on deck. - In the habit of lying. I say (to Leah, sitting on the pavement on Granville this evening) "It's so silly." She woke at night from a dream that a beautiful young man loved her - "like Eros" - in the daytime something else, a therapist maybe. "Sadness and loss" I say. She, anguish and mascara, says she knows what she is after. There is a kind of love, not romance, that has come through suffering. It is love for life. 15 a girl is in a meadow that girl who's light whose thoughts are innocent and gay swept into the world of death and flowing darkness (by the man who silences, her father) she's in the dark unrealized in potential current feared that the splitting earth would send a shaft of daylight terror down to shades below persephone in flowing grasses too her face still held its look of terror yet she was like a queen, true wife- My grandfather's house, sweeping. It's been abandoned, there are people waiting to leave. I'm looking at a painting on the wall. It was my grandmother's. There behind the stove is her narrow counter with a long sheet metal trough. I know what it's for, bread-making. Am thinking of Olivia the grandmother of the Tofteland place, who woke at four and had her housework done by noon, got on her horse and rode out to visit. Sweeping. Looking at the upstairs too, floors sagging. I won't even touch this. Downstairs moving the desk back against the wall thinking I could bring him there. -
at once this change of state is the death of that which was before
- Saturday. It was bright then dark then hot. I said today I would speak to him. Drove to his house, sat frightened in the car, seeing his window open, seeing into the house through the open door. I was waiting for courage. A woman in a dress stepped over the child-gate to go upstairs, carrying maybe a coffee pot. I saw her shoulder through his window, stooping toward the bed. I drove away, but now I had bravery. I'm going to phone. Have to go home for the number, I'll phone there. Sit in front of the phone unable to do it. Breathe. Put my hand onto the receiver and take it away again. Breathe. Try again. Is Dave there? No he isn't, can I take a message. I'll try again later. Maybe he's on the Drive. I pass his street to see if the truck's still there. Park. Walk south looking in all the Italian caffé bars. In the first one I see Trudy and startle and don't stop to look carefully at the other tables. Come back on the other side. Have to go back to her café to look there. Octopus [bookstore]. Sit reading. A woman who for a time often dreamed the color blue found herself one day looking into a man's blue eyes. Fell in love. Was in compulsion. Afraid to leave the house because they were always running into each other. Couldn't tell her husband. One day decided she would sacrifice her new passion. That night dreamed her loved and loyal dog stood on its hind legs, embraced her and died. In its place stood a beautiful baby boy with shining coppery hair. She woke full of grief. The interpretation was sacrifice of ego burst/birth of golden universal love. Skeptical and grieved. But sitting reading new age stuff I've seen that the version I have to tell him is the one where I felt the crossed soul of conflict. I cross the road to the phone outside REACH Clinic. Click numbers in fear. Phone isn't answered. Realize it was my number I dialed. Take the signal. Sit down on the ledge. The Saturday Drive passing. I'll go to Lumberland. Concrete, mortar, a hoe, a rake. Ask to use the counter phone. Musak and the public space will help me. I dial confidently. Has Dave come back? She says something, I have to ask again. Come and gone. Do you have any idea where he is? Doing errands. Can I leave a message, will you tell him Ellie says I'm doing the concrete pavers today. Driving with 8 bags of concrete in the trunk I'm not going back to the Drive. Take them to the garden. When I get home to change I find it's 3 o'clock. From heat through evening, placing and mortaring the granite setts. I don't know whether he got the message. Many times I hear his footsteps. He may or may not come, if he doesn't it's done. Now I know what I have to say to him, it's as if the pain is gone. He slept last night with a woman in his neighbourhood. Got the message when he was going to sit down to work. Doesn't want to face me because he is embroiled with 2 or 3 women already. Strong perfume, the Zephérine in a glass jar. Water and stems in glass. I want to be with a man and am not ready. As to Louie, I don't know. I will stay backed off until I do know. Meantime I must invite 'him' into the Jansen house and my grandfather's house - ie invite the feeling there. 16 A summer Sunday, incandescent. I took the envelopes out of the writing drawer and listed what I have, times. Envelope of the summer I was chasing Rob. There it is, rage, desire, pain, acceptance, denial, delight. I was reading it first for the evidence that such fantasy can begin something real, and second to be with the time and man it was, and third looking to see what is different in the quality of the fantasy now, asking whether it is a difference in the quality of the man. Today going to the garden early, wheelbarrowing sand and planting in pockets in the stonework. Coming home when pain began. Sitting there in the evening, seeing the horned waves of vines having built a sort of wild head to the vinewalk. Looking up unprepared from the page, finding the geum's red momentarily supernatural. I don't stop expecting him or speaking to him but now I'm saying, it's like this for now, but it won't always be. And still changing my fantasy through the day. New age sincerity and high mindedness, then (reading Nin) sexual directness, then bold flirtation. "Are you afraid of me?" I prayed and am vowing to stop being afraid of him. Paul Grant died last week. An extraordinary end. 18 months of constantly deepening physical catastrophe. I saw him on the Drive last fall, came up behind a wheelchair creeping up a grade, didn't recognize him until I was passing and then saw him so destroyed I didn't stop. Watching what it's like without Louie. I begged to have our personal time alone and only work together. Came home on Friday (she said she'd drop off the car) and found her in the house talking to Luke. Closed the door on her. There was an excuse as always. Later she phoned to say she won't do it again. "You are doing it again, now." It hadn't occurred to her. I laughed condescendingly at her determination. Talked about times for work. In a day, listen to my mood to see what it's like without her. I even out, see into my other times more. 17 Dream said: at her family house dressing for supper. My clothes are ragged. This green knit with wide legs. A gold-brown with the back of the neck unraveled on the right. If we're going to church it should be the green because it's less ragged. She feels less well than I. I say it's because she has drunk alcohol and I haven't. 3 empty pans on the floor. Doors in the upstairs corridor. A small Japanese television - Japanese writing on the screen. Two daughters in a room the size of a closet. I speak to the youngest. You're seven? She is. She asks, Do you have more room where you live? I say that since I've been grown up I've had my own apartments and lots of room, and she will too, when she grows up. It seems mean of their family to put these two into too small a space. The father has a very big room. I say something like that to Louie. She's offended. -
[Opposite:
1. hopelessness, pain, confusion, fear, defeat 2. a flat rock on a mountain, surrender the present self, give up, release it, make a place where you thank 3. objectivity the hawk, its feather, telling the whole truth, resisting emotion immobilizes, praying for clarity 4. conflict the arrow, accommodation/avoidance or synthesis 5. cave and fire, retreat, courage, inspiration, energy, rested strong and motivated, safety, center 6. the mirror, write letters and then say "I", take hold of the quality, find the core issue 7. knitted cord, tracing back 8. discernment, initiative, accept or change, add clarity, harmony and light] 9. cauldron, plan, act, risk, evaluate, is integration 10. diamond mind [diagram of 8 numbered parts of a circle with 9 and 10 in the center] - Got up and took the beautiful notes envelope to the Calabria. Marble table in the sun. Exciting. Clean empty floor. Many empty tables. Large statues. A new car parks fast in front of the door and a beautiful CBC exec with red polished cheeks takes out a latté in an envirocup. I have my poppy red tee tucked into the pale green RGB's with their good cut sloping with the bum to the small of the back. I'm crooked and knowing it but I've made my hair tumble and I'm carrying myself like a body that wants to be seen. Reckless. My notes say I have been here, I've built further, I've made these glass shells for love-pain to inhabit. So many times I've answered the phone saying it may be ... At 4:30 I answered the phone saying it won't be. His voice forcing and confused like me. "I got your message but much too late to do anything about it. I was looking for you on Saturday. I took a little walk and saw it." He'll help me with the fireplace. Tomorrow. I say something too about Vietnamese soup. And that I want to talk to him. And go to the garden. Will water mine. See pebbles along the 4x4 plank: HI ELLIE VISITING U DAVE Phoned Rowen. Logged dubs 7 and 8. Rode over Georgia Viaduct and was yelled up at by a workman on the ground.
The intimate form of what's being stated. 18 "Unrequited in the sense that I'm not going to do anything about it, it would be a disaster." The large Vietnamese restaurant was being renovated so we went to the small one. A wedding cake for rent, a best pair on steps descending from a tower to an island, bride and groom on the other side. The fireplace not very well cemented. I hadn't bought enough cement. Stirring it, the sound, and the motion from the feet up through the shoulders. I'm hurt, yes. June, July, August, o what will I do with this summer. Washed the windows in this room, hesperis matronalis, black pictures, I had set it up to have him in it. Lay in bed this afternoon feeling a heat in the womb that's from years ago before Rowen. Poems. It's all saying, new life come flood and lift me. What could follow the floods of fire I've had in the years where I wrote those pieces. 19 Two things. The one I was with all the time, what's it like to face his face. He came in a black vest and red brocade and shorts. I could see all of his arms and down his white chest to the breastbone. At the restaurant table, what did I look like seeing him, like someone agog in front of a supernatural being. The other, that I had to keep 'til after, my hatred of Louie's having left a mark on him, my hatred of Louie. What else. Yesterday early as I was still lying in bed a starling flew onto the sill and twice said something I didn't understand. A bit of grass in its beak. He isn't stupid. He didn't say anything goofy. It has to be likely that my leg is part tho' not all of what decides him against, and what does it mean that this time I have declared myself tho' I know it's so. I've declared myself to a man with nothing wrong with him, and I've let him turn me down and what comes of that? Another conception of dignity, that I like. I've made a relation possible. The sky has been cheeping, back and forth, invisible birds, maybe martins. Zooming cheeps. Trains. An open night with voices. It's toward 4 o'clock. At the corner of the park chestnut flowers are white dabs on two of the five trees. Gulls. Weds 19th Birds yelling in the wild area poplars today all day. Tonight a change of weather. Strong hate and suspicion of L, as if she's the reason. Joyful and quite confident liking of him. Feeling satisfied to be friends if it can be that. "I want to know you" he said. Really that's what I want too. As if: I think we can be in love as friends. Forgot to say the cat-shit theme yesterday. A dead kitten. Catshit on my shoes. On the hose when I changed the sprinkler. "I think you're beautiful - very beautiful. And sexy." "Unrequited in the sense that I'm not going to do anything about it." See, he did it well. Paul Grant's service at the East Cultural Centre. Horrible. People dressed up, high culture. Men making a pulpit of the podium. Mentions of afterlife. Evasions and denials. "Beings of light" etc. I would not sing "Praise father son and holy ghost" or hold hands with my neighbour in that atmosphere. There I thought with liking of Louie's derision. (But she would have cooperated if she were there on her own.) Donna Zapf, Landon Mackenzie. It was making me think of designing a service Louie would have to execute - no talk of survival, more jokes. Real people talking, not old male chiefs. No old male chiefs, not one. Howard's service was better. I was feeling how much the wrong class Paul's was. And his bad film. Donna such a lady, thick smooth skin. Next to her I'm a savage. Last night dreamed Louie's mole (at the throat) is the bad kind but mine is alright. Hers holds stiff when you pinch the skin, mine rolls. No one said anything bad about him, I'd be embarrassed by praise of that kind. In him it was cooperation, modesty, etc. Makes me think he died of cooperation. Better to have stories of outrageous liberties. Alvin Balkind catered his own wake, $20,000 worth. Made rules one of which was no mention of god. In the garden the first of the non-first roses. Chives and hesperis matronalis. 7 barrows of manure. 21st May Read Island Whether the contrasexual, the dream lover, is high. Yes and no, but they have to be held together. Dionysus, the god closest to woman's dream - "the man-womanly" Intense activity on both sides simultaneously. Opposites maintained in tension before there is creation. Exposed to hostile spirits and serious rivalries I always see the goddess whose substance is desire as male or female in whatever form she is pleased to appear. My black-haired daughter Strong enough, genuine enough, resolute enough to withstand A man's bright face bright black eyes bold dark and warm O heavens I'm wanting to be married 'Hallucination' - the meaning of every event being different to the other side Earth with its wide roads gaped Hekate carryin a light in her hands met her As if more than once in a day I feel the catch of it so strong an undertow so barely into consciousness that I realize it only in the way I've suddenly called for help Satisfied and content they return, the earth closes over them. Your own body becomes clear and diaphanous. The particular and the universal mind, Commanding Self Documentary and dream, the higher synthesis is always a perception of the given Thesis and film conceived of What I decided is the loving one is to be allowed to love and the knowing one is to be allowed to know. - lace and breath [house and garden drawings] Dreaming of a house and colors. The house has orchids, jasmine, a lemon tree. Underfloor heating, weighted sash windows that sink into the walls, a fireplace in the little study, gulls and pink clouds on the dining room ceiling, a housekeeper flown in once a week with groceries, a stepped walled vegetable garden with a dozen old roses on the wall and soil brought in, pines, painted floorboards, rugs, blue plates, worn silver spoons, a guest house, a sofa, a floor lamp, a boathouse with a kayak, movie editing upstairs, herons, an eagle, mail once a week, whales, a root cellar, a boiler, candle sconces, best speakers, green earthenware, hidden lockup, pink dishes, shower in the pines, wastewater to garden tank, tidal tub, smell of cedar bamboo earth flowers kelp pine. - It is so beautiful here I hardly need to think of you. It is still true that no one owns me. I'm on a ledge with firelight pressing on my bum. Water on the rock says chock, chock. Cedar fir pine snowberry kinnickkinnick, deep translucent water, green and dark jade green. Big starfish pasted on an apron of rock. Vancouver Wednesday 26th Now I've been to Read Island. Windfall Bay. Sheer Point. Shadow Bay. Surge Narrows. There the phone rings. In the garden, roses and hatred. She has worked in her garden, has she seen him here. Trudy, Olivia. 27th Money. Car insurance for 3 months. New jeans. Red sneakers. A white hat. Supper. Send some to Michael for feeding me last week. Happy at the NFB alone. Brown faced. Thin. Sort of editing. Extracting. It sometimes works best to start a shot in the middle of nowhere, or end there. Why? It gives the object an outline. Run up. Time for the eye. Thrills. Daddy's skirt rippling across yellow flowers. A red sock. Rowen's eye. People in relation to the frame. Their gestures in reference to it. The time it takes, seeing a person, to become them. Oh the freedom of video edits. Do it by feel. Let the tape run and hit the button when the time comes. The suspense of an eye's exits and entrances from the frame. I suppose it's mannered. It can be. The formal interests. It will have to be roomy to accommodate them and still have a story told. The formal interests presumably are subliminal to the story. 29th Sat Shopping on Commercial. I want a leggy man with a ponytail. The one I want most is elsewhere. But there was one at the garden this morning - a worker. Long calves, loose shoulders, weeding fast and leaving turned earth. These days alone, buoyant, edgy. About Read Island. What to say. The road enclosed everywhere in the same new green, alder, salmonberry. Friday hid out in my notebooks, Saturday Rowen's birthday. Nothing to say about any of that. Why. Blank. The long day traveling on Thursday, sore and stuck - him and her. Blanking and not minding, thinking I'll arrive after a few days. Sunday taking what I thought was Bruce's trail. A dock. Sat most of the day - no, I forgot - it was Saturday. Coming back with Michael in the boat, in the rain, the light on Sheer Point. Silver luminosity off rock and trees. That point sold for ten thousand, says Michael. Next day on the rocks looking across, working at making a house. Knowing a lot about it. Satisfied and absorbed. Looking up and seeing the crossed little shivers of the rocks. The lay of a cedar sapling bough. She and he vanish as if one sort of beauty does the work of another. Then I have that house for the rest of the days. The last hour on the ferry, falling asleep there. Tuesday I took the kayak to look at the site. Then it wasn't the point but the shadow side of Shadow Bay that gave me complete attention. A young tree grown flat against the cliff, simple, backed with rock complicatedly faulted. Shallow ledges with few plants. Clear water. Paddling close past it, very slowly, small sounds of water off the paddle sent back strong and single like drips inside a jar. The house I made had something to do with the beautiful man, but not that he was there. I was there alone. More as if he was built into it. I am in relation to visual disorder as if it does me harm, and beautiful order makes me well. 30 It's six in the morning, raining. Earlier there was a rainbow where I'd never seen one, a bit west of south, just a band, quite dull. It was a rainbow without sun, a pastel stripe on a porous uniform grey. Not knowing what to do, undriven. The house has many roses, paeonies on the bench in the bathroom. There's nothing that can be said about these frail orders. Why she thought of the electrical organization of the brain as a rose. I have these things to do: write something about the herb garden and print up construction photos, get a version of my thesis for Kim, psych and phil conference next week, go on editing when I can, write about the garden in relation to those pictures, set up for photos off video, learn to swim and kayak, roof rack. Mornings something with writing. Have to do yoga for joints. Develop super-8. Grass film. Something oftener with DC. Assemble writing on disk. Write proposal for doc. Write Orpheus, get onto optical printer tests, talk to Barry. Look up young filmmakers. 31 Orpheus
Handsome but look at the crease above the eye, loose skin under the chin, so many silvers in the black. The look of old woman I wanted to be, but I don't want to be an old woman. 1 June Meeting the beautiful man. I'm on Commercial buying cherries, not looking for him, come to the garden and there he is at the corner. I hardly want to say what followed. He was beautiful and I didn't care. La porte etait fermée. Wouldn't've minded being seen with him but oh heavy - am I cured? Or only angry. Angry too, the way he changed the subject. 2nd Walking with him, noticing sharply the looks young women give him. That was a dream. My little boy has polio. - Conference. What's wrong with this man. He's shouting. 3rd At a conference hungrily looking around for the wrong thing. Things. A husband, sort of. Sex. A liking look. A liked look. Dopey and hopeless. Closing my eyes and going away to an inn with David McAra. Eating cookies. Dreamed I was with Tony leaning over an edge. It occurs to me to ask him if he's still being faithful. He says no. The moment of joy seeing we can grab each other. Dreamed Martin backed me against a wall. Etc. Mind not engaged. What would engage it. Territory. Mind not engaged, is that what alienation means. Mind naturally engaged, like a garden meeting, is that what power means. Mind naturally engaged, is that the base of power. What do I see. Shabby-headed elderly men. Uninspiring sight. The famous ones whose voices I've heard get picked out. The rest resemble each other, shiny heads, glasses, beards, dull clothes. Departments. Pretty young women sparsely distributed and carefully dressed, not ganging together. Often set next to older men. Men with young hair sometimes exploiting it. One black, two orientals. Three? older women. Young women and earrings. Men and beards. Why I hate beards: they register more distance from women. It's Louie's birthday tomorrow. A fine person and I act like I hate her. Either she does something evil to me, that I only notice uunconsciously, or she truly 'loves' me and I can't stand being loved. Why can I stand Rob's kind of love and not hers. I'm losing a chance I'll never have again, maybe it would be my making, I'm dull without it, and I don't want it. I wanted it last year. How does it feel to not want it - callous. Vacant. Less anxious. Defiant. Not knowing what I know to make me stop, or whether it's that. Roy woke me at midnight to say he's getting married. I said, You're crazy. He said dumbly, What? I said Nevermind. It's his birthday that is tomorrow. Hers is Saturday. The way on Tuesday I wouldn't love DC either. Blank. What kind of time is it. Sobered. Liking to remember loving. Worried about sickness and death. Is it lonely? Takes it as sex but not in one of the gaping vivid desire times. Fantasy knows it is there to escape dull unengagement. [Opposite:
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"a journal of the life and labour of love in the work of ..." redirected toward the voices that speak inside the mind I am melted I am melted by thy love Nothing came so near to me as my husband now free to be married unto him that is raised from the dead Eve will now come forth as a mighty, strong, terrible eagle who nests in the tree of life The denigration of one part of the mind, called 'the creature', by another part of the mind, which watched and subdued it a new and complex emotional vocabulary times of being 'in the power' (traveling, writing, prophesying, and ecstatic suffering) Balance states of spiritual ecstasy and self-annihilation with a concern for personal integrity and the practical and emotional elements of everyday life A friend did hold me in her arms, the power of the Lord was so strong in me, and I cleared my conscience, and I was moved to sing -
[19th october 1989]
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4 Somewhere in the country. DC on the right. David Cooper faces me, he's going to fix me or at least take me on, like a shaman. Tells me to stare either at him or far over to the side. Better not that side, D's. He knows. I stare to the left. He presses my throat. Now look at me. I see a light. Watch the light strengthen and change. He says in German, Who do you want to talk to? I should summon someone I'm afraid of. Ich will mit Gott sprechen. He breaks into a long sort of dancing speech in a language I don't understand. He's thinner, in leggings like a girl. I look around and see leaves, air. It seems my vision is clearer. Maybe I am fixed. He bounds away, a young woman. I'm lying peacefully looking around. I know DC is in his bunk behind my head. I put my hand back and touch his hair, he's right there. I can touch him. We sit close together. I kiss his cheek. Touch his thigh. We're going to walk out together. He's wearing yellow pyjamas with blue bunnies on them under his jeans shorts. Are you going out in those? He is. At the door we meet Johnny Schmidt. I'm surprised he looks as young as he did when I was a child. When we pass the porch he says he has to wake his wife. I'm waiting while he phones her. Looking at my boots. Two bees or wasps. They're not here with the ranks of boots, did I leave them on the porch? No, I've got them on. - And something else, earlier. Moving east over dry land to the home place. Dropping stuff? This is dim. Leaving things on the landscape that my parents have picked up as they came to get me? I leave with them, to the west place. Meeting Paul Churchland yesterday. Looking up at a giant. It must be what it was like at 6 years old. I felt I came to his belt. The way he announced himself round about, "Now that I have introduced you all we are going to talk about perception and you are going to listen if you like." "We two are hicks and we like US better than we like YOU." What about the dream - oh the memory of immediacy - oh immediacy - freedom - isn't it what you need too? Beautiful one - with your friend - do you forget to be right there? You do - you close down - like I might when you have to phone your wife. We learned it young. Oh if I had the presence I had with them, I could meet you better, I could meet you with what would be true. Not to close down, not to close down. The false connection people make real connection from, the opportunity, the material. This morning I wasn't so stiff -
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