| aphrodite's garden volume 19 part 3 - 1994 february | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
6th February 1994 Waking worried. Work, love and money. Sunday morning. Dull monochrome blue. Projects I've briefly believed in in the last two months: We made this, doc on 'seeing', What will we know film, Titania's glass film, child leg story, Clearbrook visit story, Dame's rocket screenplay, vigorously loving K. - Is it like hopelessness? The salt land which fallows a clearcut whose animal life is fear. Try it this way - what would I do if there was hope. Hope for what? Say, if my woman had hope. Oh - I'd fix the house, I'd make clothes, I'd do yoga, clean and fix the car. Write letters. Bring out my work. What is the central hopelessness. Nothing I do in the world will make any difference. I do have hope that this private search will come to something, though it doesn't. What I do in the world does make a difference but I have no hope of it. The hope I had when I loved David. That's an ideal hope. Shall I marry animus? "To get away from the conflict of love and fear" Sadness. I'll have to be him if he won't be with me. Marry animus means make intellectuality unconscious. Imagine this: grand mythology - edges - dissolving and passing - the most beautiful desire I can be - unskimpt, uncareful - an outburst before gods not humans - huge noble and full - overwhelming - musical like Wagner, cliffs of sound - perfusions of seed and grain - go into the workshop of unshamed desire, furnish it with tools and materials, provide ego conversation with beings so large nothing will frighten them Love woman is younger. She won't put her energy behind my sophisticated goals. 7th Oh - this is what I see - it was my fault - I cut him off when he supported my defense, because I felt indebted to her - didn't introduce him, to his view of it denied him - then he flirted with her to get even - a way he knows, of hurting a woman. [Opposite page, Enneagram notes: repressed centers: feeling, intellect, doing aggressive type represses feeling, dependent type represses intellect doing center: spontaneity, enthusiasm, movement, resolve, strategy, activity, effectiveness doing repressed: withdrawal, inward focus, independence, commitment to protect themselves and their own values, feeling unable to affect, think they know, have to repress hostility constantly, stay in the past bond with the child of the forgotten center, play and adventure, confidence if the repressed center is in control, inferior doing, impulsive action, laziness, revenge] Kathleen Hurley and Theodore Dobson 1991 What's my type?: use the Enneagram system of nine personality types to discover your best self Harper San Francisco It says no it's feeling that's repressed, feeling in the sense of valuing. Ie in the person I am now it's feeling that's gone. Love woman is another personality who represses doing. Kw and Qc are opposite sides of the brain and they use different organizations of the three brains. I'm double-dominant. Qc represses thinking, I became Qc flooded with Louie, longed for Kw. Kw represses feeling. Why do I have trouble with doing? I see most things are not worth doing. 8th Dear you, are you near?
I forgot you.
What have you seen?
Do you mean, when the people went I was still crowded?
In an open moment, what?
I thought to take the pictures down. But I have to decide about K.
If I let myself in for that madness again I'll lose my own space.
Won't I see him and surge with what I lack other places - enterprise and adventure.
But won't it give me driving energy.
You mean see who wants what?
It's them, isn't it.
And the two books and the sorted piles?
Oh I see who you are! You're the other half of active mind, you're the part that makes it a dialogue.
She'll see the sorted piles as madness.
Learning, intuition, women's power, and I'm blank on the third, and then recurrence in dreams. FILM was the one I blanked. Why?
- I gave your clothes away, I cut off your hair, I sent away your child. I invite you back, oh I do invite you back. It is seventeen years later. What can I do for you?
It would make sense. I accept. My body came on when I accepted. That means it happened the moment I agreed. Where do we want to live? What do you want to do for a living? Will we have other lovers? (I love your skin.) Who do you want to know?
Oh you're so sexy, you'll fuck anyone. - You, dear wise: what do we do here?
Excited, intrigued, will everything be different? Worried she'll take me over.
I want her to be here with me and love me and play with me and not rush away to him or him or even him, or her.
This is what worries me, if I'm with you I am you and you go after people I don't like.
Oh I know. See, she just goes for it and then I panic, I'm left out, she doesn't care what I think.
I'd like her to wait until we found someone we both like. Is that possible? Or maybe just stay with me.
But then what am I? Am I there? Can we make money?
Am I an academic?
Can I do that sort of work without leaving you? Do you know?
What work do you want?
9th It's 7:30, I have an hour before work. We have. It's snowing small few bits down out of a pewter sky with crows. Yesterday after Joyce when I wanted to see beautiful things and was window shopping on south Granville there was a woman in rags with a dog led on a frayed rope who after she'd passed me called out, "Hey - stupid." She meant me, and came up behind me. "Where's honey?" "I don't know." Looking into her face. A woman in her thirties with decaying teeth and clear eyes. "How are you doing?" I say leaning my shoulder on the plate grass. Thinking, the teeth say she's the real thing. She's clear and blurred at the same time. I'm interested trying to see which. "What's your name?" I tell her. "What's yours?" "It's the same" she says. I laugh. She giggles. White gulls and grey gulls and crows. In a dream, Tony. I am leading him through many doors and up stairs, very confidently. I've introduced him to my family at a table with many of the other characters. When we emerge thru always grander doors we are where I knew we'd be, in the university hall, and this is the outdoor café, and there is the library. This is new since I was here, a much bigger building. I see food prepared in the basement. Running up the steps with him I drop the plant I have been carrying, somehow as if it were a book. It comes apart and the dirt falls off the roots, I'm trying to gather it up, white roots. I was thinking what is this plant. It's not Herb Robert. A tea herb. I plant part of it. Drink the tea with him. I said to him in the dream "In all my life you are the only man I have ever wanted to marry. I don't mean really marry." 10 [long dream untranscribed] Controlling love woman because I'm afraid of men. Controlling love woman for the sake of mind. A cryptic and sealed separation: beauty, marriage and mothering separately together in an envelope which shows only the beauty. It's what love is made of in me - child separation, all the other separations, birth too. Heartbreak essential to woman consciousness, to be deep in love is to be in pain. Court pain. 12th Feb Saturday. Waking in my own bed tho' I could have woken in Rob's. Rob made me dinner, watched what I wanted on TV. I avert myself from everything - no I think I am averted but isn't that avertedness him? Aren't I exactly him, vacant with him. Is it corruption to be that. What I know is that I can touch him now without desire. There was electric antipathy in my shin marrow. That affair is over. K's back, his van outside his house. When I see him I will fancy him, he won't fancy me. It is love without desire. That isn't workable. I'll be friends. I'll see you the way friends do, every couple of weeks. And Rob, I must stop visiting that way. Won't I be lonely? No (it says) there'll be love in construction of internal relations. Dear One, can I get to anything, waiting for him to walk in?
Do you mean that largely?
Is it large I want to be?
I'm halted there. How would I know. I'm remembering Buddhists.
Remembering wanting's I's. Can I ask and be told what to aim at?
This is a dull one.
The dull one. Is that it? There are little logs of advice.
Pinch them off. Should I run them through, is it true that cleans house?
So much. And if they are saying, it means they want, it wants, me to hear so I can help. Does it?
I do want to work with this question. It goes a long way back. Maybe the art I'm looking for is a finding art. I've coveted the arts of others.
I'm urgent for achievement.
Winds, currents.
Any engagement will give me urgency.
Getting somewhere. There are other arrivings that are mythological but in experience are not the tumble from one life into another.
Will you help me work with this.
Do you want sacrifices?
Nothing more. But tell me that certainty and what I should understand by it.
It was strong. If strong doesn't mean true how will I know?
-
13th Dear you: will you help me see what I could see in that record. What were you looking for? It seemed I was love woman then, more emotional. Say what the emotion is like. Intense joy and pain. Recording it balances between times. Passionate search. Not a writer, it's struggle for life. Turbulent. Aspiring. What do you want to know? Am I less than that? She would have asked. Have I lost something? ? I was simpler, wrote less, didn't refer outside in the ways I do - am I less intelligent? No. Am I less emotional? No. Am I less coherent? Yes. Is it worse to be less coherent? No. Would she have liked me? No. What about me not. Your interest in winning. Should I be more like her again? No. Does that interest in winning make me lose joy? No. Have I lost you? No. I feel like I have. It has to do with energy, and that has to do with health. I'm not mad at Roy anymore. Who are you mad at now? Oh, Louie. Does she threaten ideal self? Yes. Alternation. Would it be better to be able to be both at once. Yes. I was like that then too, would I be more of an artist if I mediated both in the moment? Yes but I'd be more intelligent. Is love woman the bliss self. No. Who is the contempt self? Competition. Does she (photo) have both in the moment? Yes. Was Penelope the beginning of (hermit card)? Was love woman the person who loved Luke? Yes. Who loved Roy? No. What would you call that one? Sorcerer's apprentice. I wanted to steal powers from him, was it a wrong sorcery? A bit, it broke hearts. I didn't realize there could be good sorcery, what's the quality of good sorcery, like Joyce? Yes, works for the core of goodness in people. Do I hate Mary. Yes. Is hatred ever justified? Yes. Is this hatred justified? So-so. Do you mean she doesn't wish me well. Yes. But I shouldn't waste hate on her. Large yes. Can she still harm me? Yes. She can harm my relation to myself. Not exactly. I should speak to her in order to see myself? Yes. What is the way to prevent her from harming me. Good fortune is what prevents it. Has taking that money harmed me? Large yes. So it is important to give it away. Not a financial priority. In what way has it harmed me? It buys something psychologically. What? Something in relation to men. Does she unconsciously intend it? Yes. It was most important for me not to be indebted to Louie. Yes. Mary wants me not to have a better relation to men than she does. Yes. I acted that out with Louie. Yes. Mary likes it when I'm a lesbian. Yes. I'm sensitive to that with Joyce. So-so. You mean Joyce really is like that too. Yes. Should I have a man therapist now? Yes. The sexual competition I found. Yes. Is it because of Mary's money that I can't get to sex. Yes. What should I do? See your folly. I wanted her to buy me off. Yes. To save me from what I felt for K. No. From the conflict with Louie. Yes. After writing them I had the writing fantasy to save myself from the shame of what they are. Yes. Am I on the right track now? Sort of. What would be righter? Fight to get out of the spell. How? Look at early childhood. The way Mary tried to kill me. Yes. She tried to kill my relation with him, bought me. Yes. That relation was part of my vitality. Yes. So it's true she was more of a dud than he. Yes. I'm compulsive with men because I have to overcome that resistance. Yes. Should I go out there and take him away from her? Nah. Go in order to see myself in him in the same way. Yes. Take Luke. Depends on your intention. Can I clear all this in myself? Yes. It's not important. What is? Self deception. She freaked because she felt I'd got out of her control. Yes. And had I? No. Am I now? Yes. Did my ambivalence with Rob also have to do with the fact that I had such pleasure with him? Yes. Is the competition about pleasure or status? Liberation. What should be my attitude to that? Liberated. [Opposite page notes on love, pain and balance, Eva Pierrakos:
Eva Pierrakos 1990 The Pathwork of Self-Transformation. Bantam - Mary on the phone last night. She had turned seventy and I didn't call her. Her voice when she said Luke will have to buckle down, take more responsibility, was so grim and nasty. What do I think of myself then - is that a question. What interested me in her [myself]? She mainly wrote when she had large emotion to distribute. Even large emotion about colors people were wearing - what's that. It isn't writing tho' she thought it was because it brought everything back to her. There was just one note that caught me, the sudden catch of something I could work on now. The story of Tony interested me, as if I came into a better light with him. I'm not mad at Roy. He was a grand occasion. What's next. What would I like to be next. I want for there to be abstract work I can make - light - I want to work with intuition and understanding - so intuition gives something and then I understand it and use understanding to talk to intuition to get more. This work - if I were loyal to it above all - am I ready now? New moon showing. Sitting with K at Josephine's I saw two shake-covered houses orange and brown red with budded trees and dark blue clouds standing together in syrupy gold light. He twitched and hunched and clung to his little pastimes and anxieties. I sneered pleasantly. "Es geht weiter." "Es geht wieder weiter." I hope it's true that's that. I was clamping my knees. Dear one, is that work an illusion? It is until you do it. That means, start. What will you leave behind if you start? I like the way it needs all the parts. What are you deferring? I'm alone in it, it's isolated for now, is that alright? Would all your energies agree to it? Love woman is worried, what can I do so she isn't cut off, is it man's work? Depends how you do it. Can I do it so she likes it, isn't that what it's for? That is what it's for but she doesn't like it. What does she need from me? (Kn.c) You've been saying that and I don't understand, do you mean Michael? No. A man's body? No. Art? Yes. Images? Yes. Is that work too theoretical? Yes. Actual films but they're abstract? Yes. Can I use the time with Tony as a touchstone? Yes. I can do theoretical stuff as long as I'm doing films? Yes. I feel this is a time to build a life I really want. It is. Aim for school for the autumn term, is there somewhere better to go, am I going to find it? Yes. Can I get the money by then? Yes. Thru philosophy channels? Not really, film, something other than the Canada Council. Do I know what it is? Yes. Is this (hermit) work? No. (Hermit) is only writing? Yes. What happened to writing? The writer is based in (Qc). And who am I? (Sun), success fantasy. Writing got halted because I cut off Qc? Yes. I cut it off because of K and Louie? Yes. Would it be better to unblock her? Yes. K would hurt me. Yes. Shouldn't I make her wait for a better man? No. Groan - my better self can't exist with him. True. What should I do for now? Look at childhood. What am I looking for. Feeling and intelligence in relation. 14th Is 'writing' code for feeling and intelligence together. Understanding the meaning dimension of the moment in the moment - like the woman on Granville - like going to Clearbrook. Is everything numinous? No. She was. Yes. Her teeth were decayed because she doesn't look after herself. Yes. She's love woman. Yes. Is the dog her body? Yes. I don't like dogs with people because I don't like bodies to be dogs. Yes. I like them to be human. Yes. Does love woman see through. Yes. If I see through will I want to do that work. No. Why not. It's motivated by winning. You mean it's male. No. It has to be motivated by winning for me to be able to do it. Yes. Love woman wants a life of seeing through. Yes. I want a life of knowing and creation. Yes. Are either of these inherently better? Yes. Seeing through is better than creation. Can seeing through make money? Yes. I don't understand. Love woman can make money, you're not a therapist. WRONG I'm a therapist with lovers. Yes. Can she make money as an artist? Not really. You mean money will always come. Yes. Is my love woman neglected? Yes. If I had been nicer to Louie would my love woman have been strengthened? Yes. I'm looking under Don and Olivia's bed. It's their piles of change I'm interested in but I'm pretending to look for things of my own. There's all sorts of old stuff - bottles, etc. I'm arranging it. Behind my back they've taken away the money so it's been pointless. Seeing through is seeing through to how a part of us sees. It isn't supernatural but it's soul. We live with soul, we aren't soul. No, we are soul. Do I have to look after soul? Yes. David was soul in the midst of soullessness, he could read through. Yes. He was using Louie to check me. No, to check up on you. Is anything I'm doing worth anything? No. What should I be doing? (Qc) But how? (Ac) Don't I need an object? No. Is this like Christian love? Yes. False love? No. Dear wise one, I'm stuck.
Like sputtering, like childish worry, not desperation but fret.
It doesn't know, it needs you to know, do you?
I want to know it isn't just fantasy.
I want to know it will go through this time.
But it said I won't want to do it if I'm feeling and seeing through, because it's combative.
They have been.
Soft combat.
Clear? Unfrightened at depth.
Okay. 15th February Dharmatadhu. It's gaudy and stuffy but I liked the instruction. Go out with the outbreath, dissolve, gap, touch whatever attention does, and return. She said a gentle practice that carries you to self-liking, a spark, reliable delight, and then on to insight, the oh - and then on to compassion. The Boddhisattva path. And then to the Tantric visualization practices and direct work with energy. And then in the end back to dissolving with the outbreath. It's this I'll keep my eye on: which practices are mainly social and which can carry me into metaphysics - is that the way they divide? As if I believe people are many but universe is one, and universe is bigger, and people are only big enough if they're with universe. As if going to metaphysics is a better way of being with people. Ie looking for meditation instruction be careful to stay out of the concerns of the communities. Know what I'm there for. Find the best teachers. Don't linger or eat with them. But pay attention to loneliness, don't override it. I am mapping - I'm re-mapping after Louie, where I lost my large bearings in her - I want to say - muck. But if I think of her qualities I say my lostness in her irrelevant intensities. External intensities. What I want is the widest map I can make, and then to locate my academic and film positions in it. Maybe I don't have to have romantic struggles anymore? If I do, what do I need them for? 16th A water or underwater woman who is flying, rushing away to her place or home or kind - I have very little of this - later being somewhere and seeing him thru the glass - wanting to signal to him because he's looking for us, we're looking for him - face against the glass, call him - there's more than one - slap my hand on the glass, hold my face against it in a different way, the side. Is there something of a different sort I could recall from this. The sense that she is going to a marsh over there, to the right, more east than south. Something about trying to reach him who is in another element, trying to present myself at the boundary to be able to tell him he's found us. Don't know who us is. Her touching hurry to get to her kind. He also is they, more than one, and I don't know who the smaller person is. At the end I think he was understanding. Feeling my hand looser today. Last night with R I suppose that was looser, wanting to hold him, holding him. Looking for art in water. Garrett's realm. Louie's xerox images like pictures of showing herself to him at the glass. What I knew touching myself when I woke was the wild side, what compassion teachings, Joyce too, leave out, the lawlessness of unfear that fucks teases challenges raids, comes up through. Roy's lawlessness. What I did with Roy. What to call him, I ask. King of cups it says. But what is I today. Speedy, maybe slightly euphoric, an analine edge. What's David M working on. Orpheus electronically. - Going into it agape below - what it has to do with the pink dress girl - her consciousness - when she was sent away, she gaped, maybe - she became that face showing through - yes she became a spirit who was in herself, there - she looks like someone who dilates inwardly, has a door to the otherworld inside her body - that consciousness, is that what it says find? She has it instead of her confidence. Is it death because it's not in the world. Yes. 17 Hello large
High
I love you
It's before work, I have 9 minutes. Last night was interesting, body was on, what does that mean about work
Clamping my knees now
I was her
I know, so I can realize technically. What I couldn't see was where to start, it was excited vague and chaotic
Yes it is a pour of seeds, there's so much to do
What about video
- I worked and organized and forgot, completely forgot. What does that mean?
Should I ask for a pilot of the Orpheus project
Will I know what to ask? Should I ask to review the math videos
Isn't that too fast
But what will I say
I'm frightened there won't be anything
Should I write it
It feels like surface
It's not open yet, it isn't moving on its own I'm not watching and following and judging, it isn't separate yet, do I have to have a drug and fear to do it
When I smoked then, it was there quite formed and I felt it as myself though a self I hadn't seen before, is that what I'm looking for?
That mythological person
I'm less frightened now
Is it ego that's afraid
What does ego need
Is it really dangerous
What do I have to do to do it safely
Am I safer because I'm not with them
What about drugs
Is there somebody else to teach me
Who
What do I have to do to increase energy
In practical life
Driving
Will you give me an example of that way of getting energy
Do you mean use ego's desires to energize ego to be able to slip past
I see. Should I play that role outside, to practice? I mean energetic listening and directing
Was the writing just to get up speed
Will you say more about (triumph)
A latent talent
Shd I base on Ovid
Is the only relevance the ability to go (under)
18 I have half an hour. The CISR application. I need to know what project to apply for
Alright I'll imagine that but can you tell me more
Out of love woman
With erotic writing
What am I asking for
But it has to be innovation, I need to know something about video to know how to ask
Orpheus pilot. I say it is based on Ovid but it's not
I use the Orpheus text
19 Now do I have to ask about K
Annoyed he's resisting me, annoyed he looked good, annoyed to not know
Alright, I do like the resistance, it looks good
I want to hedge it
I don't like to see his dependence on any woman
Are you saying I'm like that - Michael then Louie and Rob. Is anybody who's attractive dependent that way
How would I meet him differently - I'm worried this will take me to despair and dullness
I'm not patient because I'm waiting to be told whether or not I must suppress attraction
I'm frightened and interested but it's very messy here
Instantly jealous and then angry and nasty. He stood his ground. This is going toward long obsessing, is there a short cut
Is it meant to be playful and conscious war?
Kenneth. It is Saturday night, I saw you this evening at Josephine's. There you stood holding your ground and there I sat interested in taking it out from under you. You won, I lost. I won last time. I'm going to speak to you before god, as if I could, because I don't want to be confused. Before god, this is what I have to say: there you are. I am implicated. I'm implicated through my unconscious. That means against reason, against my will. That means you are the site of a war. What happened when you left. You were leaving, you had things to do, you were worried about losing face with your family. You cut me off, you didn't want to feel your leaving. Because you didn't feel it or maybe because you wouldn't give me your feeling of it, I felt it alone. That is an ordinary abandonment, not a large one. Ordinarily, it's alright: friends understand it. But it's usually me who does it and now I understand why. - I'm trying to be careful not to evade here, I'm tempted to jump over this moment. What am I hoping not to have to say? That you knew what you were doing, that you set me up skillfully, exposed me, and left, and used my defeat to strengthen you for battles more important to you. I didn't understand clearly, I didn't want to be certain. But that is what happened. What follows? If you defeated me skillfully and intentionally I must understand that you don't wish me well. Your reasons don't matter and I needn't be interested in them unless a war is what I want. I've said that is what you might be good for, but I said it like a boaster, not feeling what it would be. What I do want is not war but to be free. I want - here I'm being careful again, this is where, if I'm living in war, I will have to deceive myself. Why I have to be careful is that there is already a war and I do deceive myself, and that deception is what you used to strip me. There is more than one I. The one who was working in this room earlier wants to be with its own material, make what only it can make, live with itself like someone in a working partnership that can be happy and interesting until the end of its life. That's not an I you can know, or want to know. You would be afraid of her. But you have an instinct: you know how to smell the weakness in a woman. You did that: you found me out, a weak I - weak not in itself but in relation to the other I in me - a suppressed I that seems to be a woman not an artist. What she wanted - she is not here now - is to love you and be loved back, and touch you and be touched too. And she wanted to stay in existence. At the moment I can't imagine feeling that in the strong simple way she did. In relation to you, who don't wish me well, it seems crazy. But here is the twist. It seems as if you do wish her well, since you smelled her and asked for her and tricked me into letting her live. You got her out but then you dropped her. You'd often dropped her, you didn't value her. What happened then - did she commit suicide? Something like that. And cried at her own funeral, on and on. I want to be free and work; and there is a possible I who wants to be that extraordinary current of personal love. She would not say it that way. I don't dare let her speak, because if she is here you will abandon me again. But I abandon her too, from closer. Before god, as if it could be, what I'm saying is I want not to abandon her and not to let you abandon her, and I want her not to abandon me either. If I have anything to do with you, I want you to be willing to know me. But that is where it folds.
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