aphrodite's garden volume 18 part 2 - 1993 october-november

work & days: a lifetime journal project

29 October 1993 Rob yesterday met on the street, folded brown teeth, shoulders caved forward and torso slumping under his hideous jacket, not a tempting sight but when he turns to go, showing a lovely plume of honey colored asparagus with purple chives jutting protected from his bag. Friday morning, five thirty, this week's mornings getting up to go to the sound room. She can't give up trying to control, it's her form of assertion, but I can learn to resist it. A venture. Make her find out what she's doing. Changing her ways with control. Her intelligence lies across it. Founded in something about fathers. She wants to control me so she can get to the father. What I've been thinking about it in the recent past. What I'm doing with it at its best is leadership. Judgment in near future. I feel I'm coming through. Hopeful and fearful about containing her. Resource is seeing illusions about her. Outcome a plan. She uses her empathy to control perception of her. She needs to be perceived as a political activist: the truth she is concealing is her pain about the ways I wrestle her spirit to the ground - the ways I win. If she showed her pain it would be the end of delusion. She needs to control the ways I control her? Large yes. I control her by taking more of the money? Yes. If I didn't we wouldn't have the success dynamic. I don't have enough money. But I will begin to. What is it that's confusing me? Truth. I want to prevent her full power. She wants me to be powerful but fooled. Something about her I'm not supposed to see. Her courtship of the father. Of men? No. Specifically of the father. What will happen if I see it? She'll be alone. In all of this Louie is standing for the little girl in me. It's those two people competing for control. What's next? Coming through. Tell me something about that. Go into fantasy with it. That little girl and that old soul. Write it. Broad-shouldered high-hearted literate woman looking for unfrightened man. Yes but say it so it is that speaking. I speak to the left hand. Who are you? (Kw) As if a man inside me. The little girl is the man's wife. Not the old soul. The man energetically teaching math, yes. That little girl on the plain. This is the man who likes her better than me. The actual Louie competes with me for him. David my image of that man. When I love him I'm L-war, R-philosophical intelligence. When I love K I'm L-restraint, R-his self abandonment. When I love Rob I'm L-coming through, R-energy. When I love Louie I'm L-David, R-abandonment nightmare. Any relation of two people has eight constellations in it? Neara and Praxis as her two people. Neara toward my little girl, sees it as a little girl. Two little girls being friends. N toward my old soul. Feels it as losses, reverses, loss of closeness. Praxis toward my little girl feels her intelligence, feels her own intelligence, is competitive in intelligence. P toward my old soul honors as leadership. Her greedy expression is Praxis. Praxis is cunning and determined. L old soul feels about Neara that she tried to take Michael. L old soul feels about Praxis that she's wise like the book. R little girl feels about Neara that she is shattering, destructive. R little girl feels about Praxis that she's a scam, a social manipulator. The only real liking in the constellation is my old soul with her old soul, the two little girls together. What Neara wants from me is pain, separation, heartbreak. What Praxis wants from me is something sexual, and/or, to leave me. So what Louie wants from me is pain and to leave. What my little girl wants from Louie is betrayal. What my old soul wants is for Louie to be a good mother. So what I want from Louie is betrayal and mothering. What does community K want from E?     Visionary femininity. What does elf K want from E?     Wants himself to be brought out. What does little girl want from K?     Loss, emotional situation of father. Old soul from K?     Physical sexual energy. What combination in a man would be perfect for little girl? Competition and anger. It's what she is in relation to, would give her end of delusion. What combination in a man would be perfect for old soul? A keen quick intensely perceptive subtle woman and an emotional sturdiness. Would give her/him perfected work. Description of a good mother. Joyce is. It's the nondominant hemisphere that has to choose the mate. He chooses a (Qc). Mine chooses both sides. 31st Luise Braun died ten years ago, ninety years old. Was a young woman with light eyes and a long mouth, traceable as far as her great grandchildren, which brings with it a whimsical humor. I don't have it but my brother and his daughter do. It suits them. There were two faces that held me in the records of family I found last night in Roseanne's albums. The other was my father's, early in his marriage, caught in one of the many studio portraits my mother's family had taken throughout the years of that family's adulthood. In that photograph my father is not part of the family. He is alone in not looking pleasant. He is handsome with his light eyes and long face, handsome among people looking pleasant and harmless. He has the light eyes and curved beak of a raptor, the high forehead and fine mouth of visible intelligence. He stares toward the camera from behind his pleasant-looking wife, who is at home in her family as she is not with him. Her family is not unintelligent, they become or marry educators; but their intelligence is adaptable to material life. They get on. They look like people who get on. The part of their look that is not my grandmother's whimsy displeases me - and in that photograph, where I am at front and center, four years old, leaning back on my grandmother and grandfather's knees in my little plaid skirt with straps, I am looking disgusted. My father doesn't look disgusted, he looks remote and analytical. But that look of his doesn't last. In later family portraits he is trying to join. He no longer has his own family behind him, his parents have died. His ventures have gone badly. He is non grata in his congregation, unpopular in his community, economically unsuccessful, or later, when successful, he has been so at the expense of his bond with a piece of land he had loved. He is trying to look pleasant but he fails. He looks, instead, collapsed and shamed. A mood of childhood I'm remembering now. The child investigating her parents, finding and considering evidence found not accidentally but by intent unconscious search in closets and outbuildings. The closet in my parent's bedroom had an upper shelf like a little upstairs room, out of reach without a chair and even with one, hard to search without bringing down piles of blankets. In this little upper room I find a school scribbler filled with my father's small handwriting. He wrote little, I've wondered how he came by so formed a hand at so young an age. He wrote little and smashed his hands in labour on the farm. My own handwriting was childish until I was in my thirties. This notebook was his copy of a handbook on horse-breaking. Or was it a handbook he wrote himself? Sitting on my parents' bed considering this notebook, they having gone to town in the truck, I wasn't sure he had not written it himself. The style seemed not to be his, but he would have been capable, I was thinking, of imitating a style he thought impressive. Horses meant something to him. He would have liked to be described as a thoroughbred among plowhorses. He thought that of himself, I think. But he was of two minds about the breaking of a horse. It flattered him that he was in position to break the will of an intelligent being larger than himself. And at the same time he knew himself a being on whom the community, secular and religious, focused an intention to break. He chose to identify himself with the breakers. Was another choice open to him? No, it's more like this: he wasn't in a position to understand the whole of the relation one can have to a horse's vitality. He was in such strain in relation to his own temperament he could not form a clear understanding of responsibility. He was not a wise husband or father or citizen, but neither did he have a wise wife or wise children or a wise community. His wife had not been prepared for his spiritedness by the authoritarian kindliness of her own father. His children were frightened of him and not taught by their mother to understand him. (I felt, earlier - when I was talking about the child investigating her parents, the intensity of interest with which I sat considering his hand-written treatise on horse-breaking - that the only member of my family who would like what I am saying here would be my son, whose pride is like my father's. I thought it, pleased to have brought into the world someone who would understand us both.) What would I like to tell my father about horses? Oh but I am writing this for you, little girl, to help you ride the currents you have to ride in that small house on so large a land. You love a man for his beauty and pride, he is the most beautiful and the most interesting man you have experience of, but you are proud yourself and you forbid yourself to show or feel a love that isn't welcomed, to a man who does not regard you. A contest of pride. What can you do? You can feel it elsewhere, and you have done that often. - The garden today: Hallowe'en a Sunday windy and bright, firecrackers in the distance like gunshots in duck season. Some of the trees are bare, but the cottonwoods are shipping enough wind to be giving it the sound of a fall day in my country. I worked from early afternoon until dark, today the early dark of clocks set back. These days I've been brushing out behind the west and northwest beds pleasing myself with bushes seen for the first time with space behind them - Portuguese laurel in the corner, white rugosa pruned so it is floating its yellow leaves at a distance from the ground. Russian olive with r.macrantha in its silvery arms, extracted from bramble's nets. Salmonberry backed with space so its pretty points and satin legs can show. The lovely relation of rose leaves, bramble and salmonberry in that edge. The southwest edge the most inchoate - wanting you for that one, you and your chopping machine. I miss you since yesterday. The way I came into the garden when no one was there but you, frightened I'd have to find you with someone I'm frightened to meet. You came straight up from the bees. "How did I know you were here? How are you doing?" (Looking tired.) Circling a black hole, you say. "Hanging onto the rim?" (I'm not liking you.) Formal, I'm holding garlic. At some moment we put our arms around each other. You are not soon letting go. Rubbing my spine the way you do. I step back against your chest - that's what I want, your arms around me from behind. You put your hand into my collar and rub the muscle under my collarbone. "So are you going or staying?" "Oh it's like that is it, no other option? I'll do what you want." That's not what I want to hear. And he's looking beautiful now. We're looking into each other's faces as if for the first time in this meeting. There you are then - what are you looking so pleased about. (I don't say.) "That seems very unlikely." I don't know what just happened, but he did something that irked me, I'm trying to stamp on his shoes. Let him go. Up into the herb garden and scratch my arms to the elbow wrestling raspberry, broom, poplar, blackberry whips. You're somewhere, it's Sunday night, sometime next week I'll see you. Why did he say that. He was feeling me. Wanting me? Yes. Will he ever be able to say he wants me? Yes. Will I always have to outwait him? Try that again. This week do I have to outwait him? Yes. What will it give me if I do? A decision. He'll be able to decide on me? No. On her? Yes. Oh shit. Is that his true decision? Yes. What will it give him? A community. So I've lost him? Yes. Was that why I was miffed? No. Because he was so smart. If he's so smart don't I deserve him? Yes. Why do you say he'll be able to say he wants me and I've lost him? You want me to mourn. Is he really going to choose her? Yes. Why? He loves her. So why did he come after me? Something childish in him. I remind him of his mother. If I want him shouldn't I go after him? Yes. Do I want him? So-so. Should I drop it? Yes. I feel bereft. Mourn. Was he with her this morning? Yes. Doing what? Dominating her. And enjoying it. Yes. What should I do when I see him next week? Fight. About what. That he's dumping me. That he took me up without knowing what he's doing. That he lied to Sylvia. That he's lying to me. What's the worst he's done to me. Power struggle. Have I done that too? No. Caring more about winning than contact. How did he feel at the end of yesterday? Satisfied that he'd got control of me again. Should I be brutally direct? Yes. Demand he tell me where he's at? No, because he'll lie. Say what I feel? No. Then what? Compete in wit. Win the way I did at first? Yes. Because it's a better finish for me? So-so. Should I get him to chop the blackberries first? Large yes. What is my purpose in relation to him? Balance. He lies because it breaks my power     He learned to lie to his mother     It was his only way to preserve himself     Like Roy     Boys who don't have the support of their fathers have to lie     Because their mothers overwhelm them     How does he feel about his lies     they help him keep moving, they help him leave What else?     he feels they're generous Consequences for him of lying    his judgment is repressed into illusion He isn't on his own foundation     What would happen if he were truthful     he'd recover the mind he had as a child What does he feel about the way I want his arms    he sees it for what it is And what is it you've had to be     valiant Does he use it against me    no Is he glad to be able to give it to me     What's next     you deal with childhood abandonment What should I do? (frantic)     look for beauty, pleasure, fertility, etc Where    in abandonment 1st November The question was, why do I feel so much anxiety about whether I have a lover? It is not the having, it's being seen to have. The anxiety is about feeling disqualified? Intense anxiety. [bookwork with Louie on the phone while I'm in the bath] She brings an angel to lift me over the bushes, flying south. It's that lake. Hovering, skimming the surface, sinking into it to the neck, turning to look at the house small on its hill. Seeing from what I used to see from it. "Now I want to go down into the mud." "Curl up there." "It's so nice and sleepy, why would I ever want to leave." "If you remember you leave." Then it flies me home to the tub and there is anxiety already on the way. "Say to anxiety's question: I will not ask you, you will be answered." "What is the relation between the original question and the way the anxiety went away in the mud?" "Four dreams will tell you." Talking to Louie after the morning with Pro Tools, about what enlargement comes with a lover. She with me would wake seeing. That was bliss. What we have lovers for - I thought of it as education coming up from below, through the unconscious, a scooping band coming in up from under the solar plex. 2nd So hungry for arms. That's a simple self. Say it this way: so hungry for father arms. Father arms - the quietness of warm bone wall - smallness surrounded - Papa ich hab' dich lieb was a cry for help - but this is help achieved. What help. Something needed I hardly bear to know. Which sadness is this. The angel's largeness and understanding. Liking. As far back as I remember I am held at a distance from those arms, I don't remember wanting them, I am across the room from him, I don't imagine myself in those arms. What is the relation to him there - electric opposition, charged opposition - I see you, I'm seeing you, you can't get away with your bullying - but it was shallow seeing wasn't it. It didn't feel for you. "This is as married as I'll ever be." I was held out of seeing you. I held myself out of seeing you. Was it being him? Surely too. Surely two? Was she holding herself out of seeing him? What was she angry about? She wanted arms. He didn't attend to her. You married a beautiful young man who became more beautiful. He took a polish with you. You gave him that. He says a nervous breakdown in his thirties, thirty two. Is there a core of this? What am I feeling. Waiting for him to show up. Fear and excitement. Fear when I think of making a move. Suspense. Says wait 'til he knows he's ready. 3rd Taking back a library book that's late, wanting to sneak it back when the library is closed. Call number has 3's in a row. I think we have to go through the underground parking. At the gate, I seem to know how to make it let me through, but there is another woman also wanting to get in and I feel I have to let her through first. Her name was Mary I think, and when I open the door she sets onto the long library table a naked baby on hands and knees. My truck among others stuck at the top of the driveway. Can't go back or forward, it's deep snow. Men with shovels and forks. I'm looking for a shovel but he and he seem to have them all. There is a car that got through while we were stuck. Then a few rooms very clean, shovels and forks in the dark of that room at the end. Here are the shovels and I take one. But now the corner has been cleared. My truck though is gone - the landlord cleared the corner but magicked my truck away, will it be back in the two hours it would otherwise have taken to get me out. Throughout a sense of the house up there on the little hill - I was trying to get to it rather than away. - A morning beautiful on the other side of Hallowe'en. The white apartment building holding its white square face toward morning as the moon is holding its three quarters face in the high west. Slight geometries and colors. Triangles on the roof of Strathcona School, half-circles on the synagogue's roof. Wet dark red tatters in the trees showing their tops between the roofs. A clean morning after a night of rain. The clouds are heavy, saturated with dark color, and have clean sky between them. A burnish in the air, light mixed between clear bright and saturated dark. And a west wind the crows and gulls are beating against. - What she wants to write on the sky: I want Ellie to always be perfectly nice to me forever and for it never to be out of duty, and I don't want anything I do to help her be happy with other people. Does she mean she doesn't want it to be true that she is using me to rise in the world? Yes. 4th That morning happy from having got to him the day before I looked up through the windshield where we were parked in the Cineworks alley and saw an angel balanced in the angle, a 6" column at the intersection of two white walls, plain plaster flushed below with a frail blue light and above with a pale pink, a form that held out its wings in an exquisite balance of sorted feelings, right left above below with a strong keel and undelimited expanse. Thursday. What do I know about last night? I woke a minute before he knocked. (What state was that angel an image of? Heartbreak. Is so exquisite a balance?) He came in as his foster-father, a stiff-necked man brumming and jerking, and then read me Kipling in a way that wrung his torso. I felt his physical fire, so much a dance from the belly, dancing the lines, and felt the elephant's child beaten everywhere digging in his little heels resisting for his life. A python says "Rash and inexperienced traveler, we will now seriously devote ourself to a little high tension." I've stirred him up, he says, he sleeps badly. His penis with a round-hearted head and thin childish stem. What it's like being with him is maybe like being several people. One is fast and hardworking in language, and that one is playing with him, nipping and tagging. With what intention? Exercise. It's frisky. Was there with waking this morning. Another is the velvet cat that sexes with his good aura, lies still and basks, hand on his wrist. Another is maybe this one, who is looking at him with strong impartial interest. Who is he at the moment - now I'm seeing him ten years old, a pig-headed boy. Now he is that closed old military man with a stiff lip and a belligerent one. Then there's this smiling blue and red and yellow man, a conscious charmer. And it considers our motion - he's quite fiery, this man, look at the way he's coming after me - there, with him in, look at the way we're in round love, look at the way he's holding me at the shoulder, it's something new. If I turn my back at night he feels it, if I turn toward him his breath goes into deeper sleep. He likes it when I'm on top and take him. But sometimes he grabs my bum and pries me open - it's all talking isn't it. He says, I grab you. I say I'm really grabbed aren't I. A lively man, sparky. And it is the romantic person saying it, another one, who is pleased to stand on the porch showing off her catch. - The way his voice dips into Scots for certain stories. Knew a few things about David McAra I didn't expect. "He looked at me and said, I like that woman, I want her." "I said that, at first anyway." "Louie reminded me that when you came into the garden I said interesting-looking people hardly ever come into the garden, but there's one." "You were on the grass mound looking at me. That's an appraising look, I thought." Writing this conversation the - what is the sensation? - surprised satisfaction isn't it, though near - of how the stranger seen can become that furry everyman body playing in my arms. And along with it, I was thinking maybe this is one of the truer motives, the pleasure of feeling I know how to handle this kind of man who is tetchy and sleazy, ungenerous, critical, evasive. I'll never be helpless with Roy again, I'm not frozen in moralistic disapproval. I don't have to hold myself back with my dad because he's cranky, I can adore him and see through him, I can lead him out of his helplessness, I am not paralyzed. Not yet there in my sex, but today he said it's subtlety he feels and don't forget the nipples. "Maybe I could think what I like and just extrapolate?" "Probably." Oh. I like that, everybody always says harder, I always have to go against my own sense. And Louie's beautiful man in the garden where I was kneeling on the gravel weeding, squatting with his face three feet away looking at me with a cleaner face, I felt. 5th Damp clammy dependent. The face that says please love me please help me please fix me please save me from having to fix myself because fixing myself is like killing myself. If you don't fix me I'll go away from you forever. If I don't let her be the child she'll turn into the mother and abandon me. That's how she's held me into her hours of dependency. What happens when I say "When you're drier, when you're standing on your feet, when you're separate, then I'll talk to you. I'm not going into that stuff. No!" The nightmare of having to battle love. Unbearable tension last night, I was contracted to be as narrow in the bed as I could be, so I wouldn't accidentally touch her. When she put her hands on me I cringed. She didn't feel it and remove them and that makes her seem a vampire. My horror of her then is as extreme as if she were that - I don't want to look at her even, as if the sight of her could drain my life. Being kind and reasonable was no good, I held back and was kind and reasonable and she recovered. Kindness fixes her fast. But I was horror-struck, extreme in a way I don't recognize as long as I can remove myself into another room. How it happened - after him, looking forward to her. But she comes in from her complicated day premenstrual, swollen with grief, filled with the sentence that says she has failed to get, I have refused to give her, her desire for lifetime security of love. The wish itself disgusts me. How privileged she must be, what a safe little girl, to still be wishing that infant's wish. 6 The descent of Alette. By means of Duncan, by mean of the hardness endured of these days. By means of the hardness endured of the years with Jam and them, I'm sent this form. The idea of underground taken in her own way. She formed something from indications I didn't work out, but recognize. As if she said: dreams happen in different parts of a single space. Is this the first thing I've wanted to give them? As if I am saying, I've earned this extraordinary acquaintance with work on the real edge of work. Here is something to help us all. Your paintings are from there. - In the old house, Valhalla house, my grandfather's house, with Louie. The windows are very dirty. I put a large pot of water onto the camp stove. It's boiling almost instantly. Louie is complaining of my energy. I am too speedy. I break out of oppression and shout that my energy knows what it's doing. I will use it to wash the windows and then afterwards the house will be clean and I will be able to work. I'm washing the windows from the outside, standing on a box, moving it so it won't teeter. Two other women come along from the left side. They're also washing the windows - first one, then the other. Are they doing it in order with cleaner water coming along behind? I think Louie may have been helping too, inside. Vinegar. We haven't been in this place for maybe two years but it hasn't decayed. The repairs we made last time haven't come unmade. With the windows washed the walls seem very clean and sound. I am still cleaning up. Outside the back door there is a compartmented cardboard box soaked with water. Easy to get out of the way. I just wad it, it will break down in the grass. Then there's a clear passage out the back door, which there has never been before. On either side, though, there are aluminum bed springs and broken bricks. Something to be done with them. And now that the back door is clear, we'll have to consider whether we should board it over when we leave. In the living room, which is a clean long room, kitchen chairs are set along the walls. Women were visiting as if yesterday. Upstairs I am talking to Priest Peter about Dave, although I don't say who I'm talking about. I say there was a time when I was standing in a field and I heard the crash of lightening before I saw the flash quite near. Saying it I was picturing a person alone in the dark with a burst of brilliant light raying out near them like an large oval crown. A ring of fine furry rays but large. - When I wrote "I was standing in a field" "and" "I heard the crash" "of lightening" "before I saw the flash" "quite near" I understood Alice Notley's punctuation because I heard the units of writing, "I heard the voice" "that has to wait for" "the hand" - it means maybe that she locates her consciousness at a different angle to the sound of the writing voice than I do or we do habitually. It might tell me how she gets the events she does. I am in a bed with Priest Peter and tell him next that - now it's her voice - I had to act something out with Dave before I could understand it. I had to show him the photograph of my family before I could see how he looked like my father. How old was your father in the photograph? His age, I say. My little boy is running around across the room under the window. I should make him a bed. Go look to see what kind of mats and covers there are. Here's a mat I can thump into shape but it's too small. Lifting something I see a snake coiled into some springs. Peter do you know if this is a snake I should be worried about? Not a large one. Grey in a knot the size of two hands maybe. When he comes to look the snake jumps onto the window sill, was a cat with a snakeskin cap on. The window though it is a window to the outside is the outside of a window. A woman who lives behind it is in the room saying she doesn't know what to do, should she go over into Australia and ring the bell? Where's Australia, over the bridge? We are looking out the window. I am wondering whether to offer to drive her. I see my little boy has new boots on. Crude but new, like a thick plastic-y leather with crude stitching. From the back part of the house where I was cleaning windows there was also something mechanical that surprised me - what was it - a power bar with a number of plugs and cards hung from it. I thought there was never electricity in this house. Earlier than this dream one about K. I'm in a lobby reading maybe, sitting in an armchair. It's some British-like public place. Hear and see two women who I know have come to see him. One may be his sister. I'm suspicious though that one or the other may be a girlfriend. At least one of their voices is Scots. I hear them greet him behind a curtain. He comes out with them, doesn't see me or prefers not to. Is looking his brighter self. Yesterday night, out, to the Rubina. Table back in a corner, good chai and writing Luke. Driving home in the car, strong voice, singing with the radio, turning up into the alley, the lane. Then Louie predictably wanting to threaten abandonment but having to be cautious in how she does it. "You don't / have any idea / how underwater / I am" in a voice of such self-pity and reproach. I won't take it on. Talk tough. Why are you pitying yourself about that? It could seem to be a gift. Go, I'm saying, I'm not bothered, good riddance, you and your preferred calamity. Then Ken, a voice I haven't modified by management, his social voice coming from adventures in gallery openings - "a very interesting woman." Yeah. Wants to come over. Is in the mood. He's bought condoms he says, what a fantasy. "You can put them on me." I'm going to sleep I say, maybe tomorrow. And sleep through the night, 'til seven thirty, and dream. And she I suspect is better too. 7th Sleeping with K, Saturday night, I dream something too complex to remember. It is a map of our relation, the times we've had. Like an image, like a tableau. It seems I can touch or press some part of it and that state will come up around us. Where is pure sex I'm wondering. Not focused enough to use this map well, use its capabilities. And later in the night I dream it is late at night, we're up, in the kitchen. He answers the phone, it's for him. Who knows he's here? I think it's Sylvia but if I ask him he'll lie. Meantime I'm trying to dial out on the other line, can't, lay the receiver on the arm of his chair. It isn't another line it seems, because his connection is cut when I put down the receiver. I look at my clock and see its face is a photo of me and Louie in a canoe. I am in the back looking austere, wearing the red teeshirt. Louie in front is the one paddling. I look closer and see it is not Louie but another self, a younger, rounder-cheeked more womanly self. I had to fight, myself and him, to get him there this morning, but the last two hours in bed with the wintering sky were very fine. He sleeps with both arms around me, all night doesn't let me away to my own side of the bed, presses up against me as if he knows famine, which he says he does. Quoting Chaucer or Uncle Donald of Labrador, Angela Katz of South London. Talking about women running away from his little dick with a face of bright glee. Goblin not elf, that's what his nose says. 8th Monday night. Back in my bed, early evening, a romantic feeling. It says: balance, that mood will not be there next time you meet. But say it. Seeing the green blanket over my knees again, I was saying, I'm loving him aren't I, this moment. We're loving each other, this moment. It was that soft keen lofted feeling of romantic pleasure. Not sexual but romantic. The way when he contentedly licked my clit on and on I was like a petted cat meeting the motion of his head with my hand. Small inventions of motion. And the way we went silent together when the light sank. Stories from this time: once when he was traveling from the Shetlands on the bus he sat behind a young woman whose hair he liked. Lifting her case onto the next bus he memorized her name and address. For years after that he sent her anonymous valentines, from Iceland, Labrador. Once he was traveling from Labrador to California on a bus. He heard, behind him, a familiar voice, a Scottish woman from Glasgow, who knew the street where he was born. Months later, back in Labrador, the California woman having fallen through, he wrote the Scottish woman a long letter, many pages. She didn't write back. For two of the years he's been in Vancouver there was a cellist with the VSO who enslaved him, he says, with refusals of this and that. Once, for a Russian woman, he read on tape what he considered to be the thirty best poems of English. Kim who sells hotdogs outside Vancouver Little Theatre. Nancy of last year. The club-footed woman who was fey, wore chiffon and floated as best she could. Learned something with Louie - did we - something that has happened a thousand times. We do something like sound editing this morning, I'm wracked by working with her, being harnessed to a mind not my own. She falls into apprehension because there is a strain, which I but seemingly not she know will go away in its own time. She presses me for reassurance but doesn't know she is doing it. I feel the pressure and indirection as a furious dislike of her look, which is doughy and pleading in that state. It escalates to hatred which I try to civilize by lecturing her about how she is pushing onto me a desire to have her emotion managed from the outside, like a baby, instead of calling up her inner other to manage it. How do you feel about the way L does that? Ducks-in-a-row. Letting herself be a baby. Because her baby is intelligent. She's doing what I was doing with Jam. Why does she resist looking after herself? Because it would involve a change of state? Why does she resist that change of state? She'd rather be in childhood, because she enjoyed childhood. Was I in childhood with Jam? Yes. What I get from Louie's childishness is I feel I'm in control. How do you feel about L's emotion? That it leads to coming through. Was the emotion about David your emotion? Yes. Are you David? Yes. What's the relation of 'David' and the young woman? Beauty, pleasure. Does L's emotional self want her other self to be in control? Yes. Does L's right hand want to be in control? Yes. So why doesn't it take control? Was I more able to be emotional when she was away? Yes. Why couldn't I continue when she was here? Not strong enough. I have to have affairs with other people so I can be emotional. Yes. Affairs are my main way of being emotional? Yes. Because sex belongs to a different stratum? Yes. There are lots of sorts of emotional connection I'm cut off from? Yes. And K is like that too. Yes. 9th Coming in through the back of an Air Care station in snow. Many ruts. The line of cars is down to just a few. My car's been through the test but I'm thinking this would be the time to do it. Oh, maybe it's 4:30, it's not the snow, it's that it's the end of the day. Walking through, the many wheel tracks in slush. A woman on a team talks to me until suddenly her attention swivels away into her professional place on the team - something just began, a woman came into labour. They're more like mechanics or cops than midwives. I jerk up on the bed, am I the woman in labour. In some dream I don't remember I am on a street and suddenly K is there looking at me, the way it is when you catch sight of someone on the street. But he is in the dark, not that it is night but his figure is as if it were standing in quite an isolated dark area. The feeling was oh - you. I am in a new school as if in Australia. There are interesting people I can see but don't know. This man at a desk with very interesting books I'm noticing the names of - a very big book with a new leaf-green cover that I know is one of a set of three novels. I have put myself onto a very tall wooden structure high above the campus. Old grey beams, very large. It's like a colossal telephone pole with cross-beams set far enough apart so that I can drop down from one to another only very carefully. Far down below is the sea. I've put myself into a danger that only I can bring myself out of - helicopters occur to me but I feel I can do it. There's fear but also a plan. I'll let myself down to the lowest beam and then I can dive. I'll know deep enough water by its color. And that's what I do. On the last beam I look at the water. It's divable. I let go and dive and remember to curve up, and rise a long way to the top and dock gently against a rock of shore, all in one motion. I know that what I've done has changed my position on campus. The interesting people will want to know me now. I'll be accepted. Before I made my dive there was a film in which I saw myself walking, stepping onto a bus in high heels. I saw my pelvis rocking strangely, and then as I stepped onto the bus the heel of my shoe drops off my foot. Having dived I'm thinking I can wear other shoes, flats? Socks? Boots is the answer. There is a young woman I like the look of saying that in her despair or discouragement she takes a drug that makes everyone sexually interesting to her all the time. Diving is sleeping, dreaming. From an exaggerated height into the unconscious.   What is the green book?     Early childhood - the record of. 3 vol, first 3 years. What is the wood structure?     Liberation, to be able to make a deeper dive. The school - completion, improving one's position. The interesting people, a power structure that excludes me.   Is it a description of what I've done long ago?     No. How am I to take it?     Your relation to men. I plunge deep into the unc to make myself interesting to men.     Yes. I take myself out of the feminine position where I'm disqualified to make myself interesting to men.     Yes. Is it my despair or discouragement?     Yes. Despair because of other kinds of feeling that are blocked.     Yes. Does uncon here mean blanking?     Yes. He thinks he wants a femme fatale because it's a mirror, homme fatal. Blanking female instinctive feeling?     No, the feeling of defeat.   Originally defeated by my mother?     Yes. As if she spoiled my leg?     Yes. She really did compete with me?     Yes. I felt an undercurrent?     Yes. Such powerful revenge I never went near him again.     Yes. Did she cause me to be ill?     Yes. Did she want me to die?     Strong yes. Why does Joyce say she's a dud?     She tried to ruin you. Who was she competing with?     Revenge, rather. Against someone in her original family?     No. Really against me because she was jealous?     Yes.   But was it related to Helen?     Yes. She felt she had made Helen die?     Yes. So she was glad to be rid of me?     Yes. She named me after a dead sister.   Does my father understand any of this?     Yes. That she banished me?     So-so. Did I have the same murderous impulse toward Luke?     Yes. And I project this onto Louie?     Yes. Was Jam's mom like that?     Yes.   So what was her rage about the picture?    Betrayal. Was that a turning point?     Yes. What has been my stress with Mary? LH, have you understood all this?     Yes. You feel or know that Mary tried to kill me?     Yes.   When I wandered into the bush was that the first time?     NO. But was it an attempt to kill me?     Yes. Was it also because of the enslavement?     Yes. Were Luke's injuries my attempts?     Yes. I was doing what was done to me?     Yes.   Did K get wrenched back to his real mom at this time of year?     Yes.   Is Louie innocent of what I project on her - that she's going to take something away form me?     Yes. But does she?     Yes. What?     The hiddenness of your structures. Is that good?     Yes.   Did Mary's mother attempt to kill her?     No Did she actually kill Helen?     Yes. Because Peter liked her. Mary's uncon knew it. Is murder common in families?     Yes. Did Joyce cause her daughter to be crippled?     No. But did she want her to be?     Yes. Does Joyce know about this sort of murder?    She wouldn't put it that way.   Did Louie's mother want to kill her?     Yes. Did her father say that to protect her?    YES. Did it work?     Yes. Does she need to find her mother out?     Yes. People fascinated by murder.     Yes.   What else should I know about this stuff?     Act on it. In what area?     Feel losses. Isn't it dangerous?     No. Because I'm doing it with judgment alongside?     Yes.   Is 'keeping in touch with the deepest being' the best way to live?     Yes and no. Why yes?     It's faster. Why not?     Because it's isolating and hermit-like.   Is there a common way?     Yes, action inwardly attentive. Like sometimes acting at the garden?     Yes. Suggestion?     Practice it during physical labour. Inwardly attentive to what?     Something to do with feeling. Rhoda's kind of attention?     YES. More?     Reciprocity. Do I do this already?     Not worth mentioning. Do you mean using the body well?     Yes.   How do you feel about 'attachments'?     They are the way mind is tempered. They are good for a person. What about that pigheaded person of Louie's?     Love it. Can I?     Yes. What would I have to do to be in that state?     Feel her oppression. What would I have to do to be able to feel it?     Think. Something deliberate with language?     Yes. 15th Dear you, Saturday morning in the Calabria. I've been longer away from you, but here I am. In bed this morning reading Neil Gunn. It was bright at the window, four gulls passed between the line of the roof and the edge of the window so I saw it was daylight and clear away from the yellow light on the book. A village young man reading Hume and looking up into memory of his own process. That ability or taste, you have. Could my liking for myself at seventeen have been so alone I have to remember it as you? Light and six feet tall a young man twenty years upstream from me. Is it up or down? Upstream and downstream and contemporary. Your spirit is mine. Your social markers are set in a time evolved from mine, downstream, you're twenty years earlier in experience, upstream. Oh beautiful spirit, I don't have to be careful what I say. How are you? There's my shoulder bony against my chin. I feel the long spine's torsion up my back. Thinking of getting a letter in your unfirm, uncontrolled hand, your hand unfrightened of fright. Large beats up from the body throw it sideways, a pen plotter. Where can I be with you? In tears. Los versos. How am I? In three places - four. There's a man who when he sleeps beside me stays close all night. What about him. It's half a heart. Which half. Warm fur. Esoteric fur too - the way an open body gives off electrical fur into skin that can feel it. Which half not. There's no loving mind in him to say who are you, what do you know, what can we learn, what can I tell you that I didn't know I knew. Second place, with Louie and not with her. Half a heart. Which half. The one that says hello, what did you do today, what did you feel and think. Sweet generosity that then presents its bill. Rage, envy, hatred, monstrous prying, furious secret will. Stupidity beating against me year after year. The video. Sitting with machines handling images. Is there anything to say about that? Does the brain like the computer? I dreamed I could touch different places on a screen and have zoom up in me the different states of being there are - I could touch a region of the sound map with the cursor and become a time in all it feeling. I could touch something on the map of a relation with someone and instantly be there with him in that emotional region. What electronic editing is. Doing it all the time, this moment. And the garden, and what it means. Physical world going on by itself, days, lights, birds, winds, beautiful autumn, color, color, air, earth. Water. Alright, that's it. Talk to me. - He's physically loving, verbally almost completely closed. Looks at things I show him, says nothing. I get desperate for a word, try to prime him by responding more myself. That makes me seem too hungry, he gets the upper hand. And because I'm sensitive and he's evasive about her. Yes. Why is he physically responsive?     Because he needs something. Why is he verbally unresponsive?     Because he's trying to keep a balance. He doesn't do it to control me - does it to control himself. What should I do?     Be brilliant and courageous. Does he really stop himself from responding, does he feel more than he says?     Ask it another way. Does he love me?     No. Because he loves her?     Yes. So shouldn't I drop him?     Yes. Tell him I need to be liked more than he like me. We have two weeks left.     Yes.   What should I do with it?     Find the childhood in it. The sense that I have to cut off because he won't respond?     Yes. Did I court my father for a while?     Yes. What does being brilliant and courageous involve?     Loss. Losing him.     No. Feeling loss.     Yes.   What do you have to tell me about him?     You see your exclusion in him. What else?     He's married. Ken is married to Sylvia?     No. The way I feel about him harks back to a married man.     Yes. Would it help to talk to him about this?     Yes. How did he feel when he left?    He felt his deceptiveness. About what - there is a crisis he isn't talking about?     Yes. Something about his mother. What happened when she got him back?     Yes. How do I get to feeling loss?     By directing physical forces, like what Joyce does. 16th I go to Calabria in the early aft because there's time before Pro Tools. Halfway in and startled, there's him with people at a table. What I need to say is how bright he was, gorgeously flashy, full of himself, fast, the green sweater is good but it doesn't account for the sheer I suppose testosterone if that's what makes male fire. He thinks he's winning doesn't he. What a scrapper - last time, I was undone. I said dump this ungenerous guy. This time I say, hm, it suits him doesn't it. Look at the spark he can muster at 42. 19th I was awake when the light was ungreying on his face, he asleep. We were body to body all the way down, he with his arm under my head sleeping the way he does on his back, both hands on me, both of mine on him, innocent transfusion, his young eyelashes. He was a youngster, I was skin, I was saying this is an hour I like so much I'd like to be able to call it again. His face gives me pleasure and I had it all to myself. face, voice and glow. Your undotingness gives me something too - I admit - this chance to be what she gets to be. But then I brought myself imagining a very big slick thing you'll never have, adoration didn't have to be loyal. 20 Rob phones. I'm not burning that bridge I notice. Video editing. I've noticed finally that what happens to my face in that work is like sunburn. Sore eyes, eyelids, cheeks, lips, whatever's exposed to the monitor from above. 21st On-line [edit] today. A wet Sunday. The tape will be done next week, K will be gone a week later, L not till the end of January. It's K I'm feeling. Over there in your bed naked and warm and pretty with a latent rumble in your chest - and a lip and an eye and a thumb - and sleek fine hair with a smell of sand - and the reversal structure that gives me one kind of frustration and you another. That won't change and has been my pleasure and task and discouragement. 24 Sound. What I don't like in what we have. The lines of the levels are hideous. I want sound to be simple. There shouldn't be muddle in the movement of attention from sound to picture, there should be open space, clearings for something to come into, clearings afterwards to notice what you have noticed. Time for intelligence to gel what it has never noticed before. Home again. Two weeks sound editing, since Saturday, four days working on the final mix. Early mornings, late nights, Monday 5:30 through to midnight Tuesday, thirty hours in the Pro Tools room, two hours of sleep on the Cineworks couch. Two in the morning, spite escaped me, I said what I'd been feeling for years, I'm going to be so glad to get rid of you. Later that morning, still before dawn, friendly again. We were fighting about how much of her voice would be in herb garden, night falling. Today again about whether I sex with men. These days being with her with people, seeing her ways with them, she seeing mine. What we've hardly done. What kind of film it is. near streets. Bright clear and strong. Primary. Strong shapes. Unusual. Class politics without the manner of class politics. Idiosyncratic people, freedom and affection. Nothing dull. Foreground/background play in three layers. Sync background, visual foreground and voices in the ear. Michael looks at me when Muggs says 'Skid Row.' Rowen dances to a fiddle we provided later. There are many twos, the blue twin houses, the ee's and oo's in Keefer Street, Keefer Rooms. The woman and her reflection, two cyclists, two cars, "Ch-Chinese," "one and the other," two Indians passing the Chinese temple, two lesbians, two sick guys. Other threads: drifting fluffs. Radios. Horizontal flow: cars passing the garden, pedestrians passing M and Row, both cars and people in Chinatown, bus in front of DERA, the purse woman, Louie's yellow. Confrontations: houses, radio man, M and Row, the weight lifter, Joe, Sheila, orange muscleshirt man, blue-faced musician, our reflection. Signs. Oranges, reds, blues, yellows. In curly kale the frame flows horizontally, there's no confrontation, there is a forest of the small. It's another mind, it's two again, a two between modes, the two begun in near streets with Juan, a two of parallel texture in sight and speech. It's not primary colors, brown and blue-green. Plants' motion. Unhalting revelation, time's pace and earth turning. Then bye-bye waves the little lettuce leaf and bump goes the frame into the end of the show. But first we cross a space of open ground with no voice anymore. herb garden, night falling. Is it anything yet? The plants and their industrial sound. Plant character like house character and face character. Whispers. Giggles. We've spoiled that though, the laugh isn't infectious anymore. It's image-sound stuff but then it changes, post, a gate and pool, children's voices, somewhere back of the gate, Look at it look at it look at it look at it the girl says, the boy says there's a big hole, motors and frogs take over, one flow of sound, a woman's hair, a woman's hand, another woman we grope for, the sudden smell of basil, a colored dark, a darker gate with lights. The way west sky keeps blue when it's already dark, the way water holds yellow squares while it moves. A fade that goes way deep under the threshold and is still there. [Opposite: subtle body "has to be made" What if it's in the brain - "the body of feeling" Attention nourishes it. Ways of making attention = athletic, privation, mindfulness practices, movement practices, shaping from outside (like Shiatsu), ritual, sex Emotional path the way of devotion Intellectual path cosmology and geometry   1. the eyebrow centre - focus sensation lightly, breath, holding expand 2. from heart centre ask to let go of negative psychic tensions, warmth and tingling of hands 3. notice what other people do for you - which center - and focus on it, breathe it in   Sensation of space and silence Fear grief anxiety pain and trauma Viscera storage vaults for undigested impressions An inner movement of welcoming, remembering through sensation If you get stuck back off to a more comfortable place and then try again, bringing the comfort along The emotions that are openings and those that are closings   And why 1. breath - direct way to instinct emotion mind and spirit, just observe, use the sensation of breathing as a telescope, hara breathing 2. group or teacher 3. somatic practitioner, conditioned emotional attitudes] 25 I'll never find a holder like you are - best night holder - it isn't sex is it - it's motion, you're a dancer, and with your lip too. I have my mouth inside yours holding tight your tongue. On and on, you don't tire. Dreamed a new turn. The first dream where Janeen came into my bed wanting me to touch her. Her clothes coming off. I anticipate the white sides of her breasts. But she's an old body now, the flesh on her bum is loose and stringy. I know what this dream is, my own bum. I'm thin, it's old in his and any bed. She has come to me too late. In your kitchen at a loss. You haven't welcomed me, I'm crumbled, I can't talk, maybe all I can do is go home. I get up and walk into the other room, I'm so sore, crouch at the radiator. This time you know what to do, come behind me and stroke my head and hold me and say Do you want to just go to bed. What was it last night, you were withered and jerky, you were carrying your head forward like an old horse, your ruddiness was like spots of rouge on a crone. The shrunk head of your haircut. Departure miseries you aren't conscious in. I know them. Further work. I ask to keep herb garden on the disk. Waterpipe. I want to work on two tracks with it maybe. What kind of sound I'll have, sound designer. Optical printing of something dark. Singing from underground, aboveground things underprinted. Money: if we get 1600 each from Vancity, then I owe Louie 2600, which is her salary 1600 plus her expenses, and I owe Visa 1000. Over 9 months that was 300 a month. And I don't have money for December. It says we won't get the Council money. I need work funds. With the project: two things I want. I want first edit of all the sections and to have her respond and refine and work with the sound. I want a financial structure that recognizes that she is apprenticing with me and has more to gain from the collaboration professionally, and I have more to lose. 60-40 or 65-35. I am teaching her process at a very high level. So far she has given me, in exchange, something I could feel as liking. That's at an end. It was her method of getting something she couldn't get by herself. She doesn't want to know what she wanted. I think she won't want to acknowledge her apprenticeship now. I was foolish - no I was bargaining - when I made the first agreement. I thought I would be loved. 26 The way in dispute with Louie I am not getting to the clear statement. It's polemic, I'm embattled. I keep feeling: there is something unfair, she is exploiting me in some way and I haven't formulated what it is. An unformed grievance. There's something you're doing, some kind of con, why can't I see it. Two things: I feel a grievance, a little daz'd griev'd one. Other thing - something about money. If she gets half I will have undervalued myself. Both say she's doing something she doesn't know she's doing. Something she is getting away with is very expensive to me. What might it be. There's the book and her monster. As if she could give me the book but she chooses me of all the world to be the only place she exercises her monster. The stupidity of that mechanical dwarf. The level at which it engages me. I'm still feeling it - is it - polemical assertion that shuts its eyes and hurls anything and doesn't attend and can't know. I dream about jobs, possible jobs. Working in the hospital and living in a room in the old Y in Edmonton. Some Dutchmen wanting 14 people to cook vegetables. I say to my mother I'm so in debt, I owe Louie, I owe Visa, I owe my sister. She's not worried. She says, You're a very gifted person, do your academic work. Friesen's place, the old couple in the house, a concrete pad, earth, imagining the vegetable garden that could come to the edge of it. Pine forest next to the house. And at the end of the dream a large building being renovated for a school, Dave Carter's school. I walk in and he's there at the sink. It's the first time we're seeing each other since. Has his back to me, turns his head. Hi Ellie. In a voice that says, You cut me off, why are you here. What is his institution? I think it is sweet love but it is loss. Has he always been sweet loss? Yes. What is this discouragement? Discouraged with the cards, as if I can't make sense of them. Is herb garden as bad as I think it is? Yes. Because of the way our relation is not worked out in it. Is it what will lose us our grant? No. What then? Lack of judgment. Do I lose my judgment in relation to Louie? Yes. What should I do about it? Take final responsibility for it? No. For it to be good I need to dominate her? Yes. Why? Otherwise you're indecisive. Does its quality depend on my quality? Yes. This collaboration has been love for me and art for her? Yes. I feel cheated because she's getting the art but I'm not getting the love? Yes. Did she need to delude herself that it was love for her too? No. She just needed to delude me. Yes. The delusion cracked in relation to Michael and David. Yes. Where will I really find love. In art. I am trying to invite her into true love? Yes. This is difficult. Yes. She doesn't dare let go of seeming to offer me the other kind of love. Is there something I don't dare let go too? Loss of the mother. Is that right? Yes. If I gave up loss of the mother, what would I be? What should I do to understand this? I'd be married? Yes. Giving up loss of the mother is very scary to me. Keep strength in reserve. How do I do that? By creation? No. Skill? No. Wisdom? Yes. What is the mother, what's another way to say that? Continuance? No. Identity? No. Confidence? No. Security? Sort of. Dependence? Yes. So is giving up the loss of the mother giving up independence? No. Giving up false independence? No. I don't understand this. If she's lost already I don't have to fear her being lost again? Yes. Is this the axle on which my relation to her turns? Yes. What should I conclude? In fact I can't handle connection? Yes. L: no. Should I give up on it? Yes. Is it true that it can't be mended? Yes. L: yes. Then why do you say I shouldn't give up on it? L: (10c). Why don't I understand? Because you're excluded. From what? From Michael. What?! This completely doesn't make sense to me. Something about men. Uh!! I can't give up on connection because I need sex? L: yes. Do I need sex? R: yes. Why do I need sex? It brings a certain energy into you. Physical wellbeing? No. Emotional? No. Visionary wellbeing? Yes. Are there other ways to do that? Yes. Please name three. Loss, dream and liberation. Is this loss of Ken a final loss of him? Yes. What will cause it to be that? Wisdom. Will he have been given something? His withdrawal. How shall I handle it to be not damaged? Feel what's oppressive in it. But I'd like to send him lovingly. Yes. Was he lying about that woman last night? Yes. His lie was only in the way he withdrew? Yes. Is this important? Yes. What will I be given by his departure? Liberation from his conquest of you. How did he conquer me? By the rest in his arms. Will he like it I'm crying for his departure? Yes. Is it better if I don't tell him? No. It's alright to give him my sadness? Yes. What will I be given by her departure? Anger. Has she caused me to lose my anger? No. Then why will it give me anger? Because it will be a defeat? No. Because I'll feel it as a defeat? Yes. In what will I be defeated? I will feel she has taken my worldly success from me. Yes. Because of her reading? Yes. Will it be true that she has taken my success? Yes. Did she manage me into defeat? Yes. That was her game? Yes. What should I do with this defeat? Experience the crisis. Should I try to set things up so I'm not defeated? Yes. If I refuse to see her from now 'til she leaves would that help? Yes. You mean, do the video stuff and then cut out? No. What about money? There will begin to be money. I want her to go this time without holding onto me. Yes. This is going to be a hard time isn't it. Yes. part 3 aphrodite's garden volume 18: 1993 october-december work & days: a lifetime journal project