| aphrodite's garden volume 2 part 1 - 1985 july-august | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
In past two days the little more able to be calm and awake, touches breast and other things, grabs hair and clothes. This evening 6 to 11:30 never firmly enough asleep to stay in his bed. I escaped to newspaper but there's no free time. This morning he was awake from 4:30. Lay next to me crying until 5:30 then slept some. After bath falling asleep when I remembered having to go to the bank. Wandering in Chinatown dangerously riding with him, head rolls back and sways. The ways care and time have changed without J. Not having the morning sleep I'm older, stupider. Don't have the clear quiet morning because he hasn't been out. Michael patiently carrying him all afternoon but I lose an hour of my 2 hour stretch traveling to him, feeding, talking to M. Evening is completely gone to him. 3 hrs sleep (two and a half), maybe another, maybe less and broken. In the day maybe a nap. - Italian wedding music [from the Ukrainian Hall], a baby. It's toward midnight Saturday. The wake motion from our stop is coming in now. The way I apparently foolishly, by not being able to keep off Michael's body, left my faithful friend, collapsed her investment, brutalized her, broke her fragile love for the baby. The eloquent crying for our unable bodies. "Confidence destroyed." I miss seeing him with her, being able to collate. Anger as if it was she who left. That's what I'm wondering. As if she arranged to have me leave. I behaved with honour, she needed to say. Yes I say bitterly. I'm saying, you were realizing the exhaustion, time to transfer to the single life. Realizing I have no time to look after her now. In the van when she said Michael should help more since it's no use anyway. Both of us acting as if we knew our time was going to be up. When she'd say we were going to raise a child together, I'd keep silence, I didn't believe. Uneasy when she wrote her parents, wondering whether to supervise, keeping silent often, the stress and wrongness. "Vainglorious." Jerk, crash, ritualism, busyness, affability, accident, mad schemes like buying and planing maple, crises. Dear unworldly one - You too, wonderful Michael. Says if the baby stays in the pouch the whole time he doesn't get
frightened. I fly on the bike through the heat - it was he who moved near - to his hotel - climb the green stairs amid red doors, hear the baby crying, walk in and undo my breasts. And there's this unknown friend looking like someone who lives in another world from most, the tall thin people with beautiful hands, hard limbs, old clothes on the most distinguished frame - oh dryhair starved face. I'm too licentious with him, starved, and he's an innocent who wants it to be his mom and dad in love. 15 Drugs - I drink strong tea and he doesn't sleep and I sometimes abandon him in stress. Jacob's room - speed of her turns - precision (stamina) - surprise - ego by-pass - economy. Donna Zapf. Dangerous to have a baby. "I live by my wits. I make my living by talking." Woolf's brittleness [she says]. She dewy. Tea and vision of competition. Every day working a different sense of power balancing. Today it's I took the moment to leave her ("You chose the father well") because I was set into bitter determination after her winter with them. And the long account with T, humiliation makes mean. Meanness is a defeat but paralysis was too. 16 A switch on or off. You look like a different person. The touching that's a pay-off. It isn't that it's - a heart plea - so much of my own kind - for it to be real. Hear myself pleading with her. The moment lying down when I feel the heart - fear in solar, pain in throat - Oh quiet arrive - Haze and cloud in opal - that northern sky now where we both can see it - dear one I'm defending myself from our accusing - the calamity happened to both - that's only after Shireen phoning
and Sandy's voice - to recover our best way - the glow through the eyes that is the same best way with him - I say I'm feeling the heart center open - he with tears squirting on my cheek says "That's what I'm working toward." How different the world looks when we're - his images - am I going to be without again - but the electric melt and little squeaks, I couldn't refuse to find - Further in love stiller with you. Why Cupid is a baby. An early morning in the streets with him. White flicker moths into the green and shadow of the tops of the pines. The humming bird at Diana's scarlet runner, grub body squirming, wing blur transparent and head stock still. Materialized and then shot away
How is she now - the juggler with 2 pentacles, ships riding big curves. Harmony in the midst of change. The Indian cotton shirt left in my closet. Small things come to be known. 17 What's the truth of whether I want / am willing for her with the baby. She comes into the downstairs hall, says she asked T how we were upstairs, she said 'passed' - I thought it meant I'm passed on to Michael, whose form shows at the door. Past. Fright. Then Rhoda from her door, urgent voice, to Jam, "You have to --- -- ---." Means, you have to assemble the whole picture. Do I want to be completely passed on. What am I afraid - that I've failed a test and am chuted - punished for an inferiority - to get smaller means to lose you - what is the you I lose - what is the inferiority - that I want physical simple direct warm - the hand on my head - what I give - "but he's large" - I cdn't override - or because I did override. Her advice was always, be complex. Michael's, be simple.
The baby's crying. I don't want to lift him. He's a blank. If I don't feel his feeling, I don't know anything. Lying down, joyful sinking, then he cries again. Mornings not staggering but a jolt in the light as I reach the door. A musician said, the quality of the silence when he stops. Hanging onto Jamila's distinction brought me into such poverty that now my husband is a skid. "She was so elated when she shared with us, 'I'm going to adopt a baby with Ellie.'" He returns some of what I lose with her. And beyond him maybe. If we were going to write our story I would keep bringing it back to the porch, this one or the one downstairs. Quickbeam, the quicken, rowan or mountain ash. Delight of the eye, namely luisiu, flame. Rowen, regain. A second crop of grass or hay. Isa. Caerthann "like a forest." I want to hear your story because it's mine. 18 8 weeks yesterday. Holding him to feed in the night, his hand on my other breast so light and calm. Awake at 4:30. Sleeping on my chest 'til 5:30 sweating. On his stomach next to me, with my hand on his back 'til 6:30. Then feed and sit and we go in the bath. I wrap him and feed him again. He closes his eyes in the crook of my arm. Sleeps 'til. Eats. Falls asleep on my belly as I'm listening to Gzoski. Michael in yellow shorts. Gone by 11. Last evening on the porch. His night crying much less and then asleep on my lap. I tell M why I want his stories, he draws his legs up, wraps his arm over them, in the broken wicker chair. When we walked alongside the USS Cape Cod, women sailors,
panties riding high, stringing canvas on a high deck, sashaying off duty. Battleship grey. Long time suffering that you could enchant me by skill. What I had to enchant you with seemed illegitimate or common. When I say why I want it in me not trying / skill outside, what happens is he cries that he's afraid I'll leave him. 19 I say I want to be in wonder and learning as I've sometimes been. He, I want to live more in a way so I could die anytime. Prancing animal feathery legs, comes dancing and slow cooking because 2 drawings. Valhalla Lake. A giant baby, a giant wiggy, a little woman. Yoga. Going into the old exercises tests the returned body. Thicker strength. Balances, able. On the varnished floor feeling like -
Last night Michael a madman cunning starved says last time before I left him he was decided to kill me. I remember that was why I left then. I forgot, now he's at the point of it again. 20 Morning pain. Evening pain. When I'm alone with the baby. Last night terror. That's a screaming inside the throat. After going to the Carnegie together. I'm very bad to be ashamed of you. The girl who rose. Why did she have to fall. 21 I was hating her. Crying. The long morning. Pain so much I don't look at him. Escaping into story. Given a rest. His alert time touching and looking naked in the bath.
Cheryl last visit at the Vegetable Patch. My steady grey friend with fine eyes. Hears me out though as always it's much. We walk through the new construction on the tracks. I trust her to show her who I'm working with. She that the newborn is everything around. Daphne's view of him and her. That I bumped Jam because I didn't want to do it with her, her way. That they keep gathering for group mind altered states. That she doesn't do the work she loves most. She imagines painting, because she wants to figure out how it works. We get from some social accommodating further into mental pleasure, walking in the heat. She's carrying plastic bag of infant development books, I under arm-damp rim the padded bag of her photos of Jam and me. Talking fast and loud coming to a stop at the corner. Continuing, blind except to immediate road. 22
The many likings, last night my fingers not imitating on his little penis, what's that kind of touch, alert, only the small oval pads. How are they light and very deep pressure. He said You're a genius! Keep being in double dialogue with you, don't want to see you, want to account everything I hate about you, hold every way I don't want you having the baby. Working to get the breasts back. On an evening like today, the cigarette smell, man foot sweat smell, his look - I'm thinking
I like you but what is it wrong with you, something I'm peering at, is it a state, is it a kind of damage I don't know to recognize - 23 Chose him as my kind of writing, detail of the pleasures of dancing
Sets - other people - programs induced and can be run - are 25 Both less in pain in mornings
26 When he comes home in the afternoons his brown pink skin and clear interested eyes. Michael woke this morning happy to be. Every morning a picture. Every afternoon he lives with the baby. Some evenings we sit on the north porch, the baby falls asleep in my arms or his, the sky colors. When it's dark we lie down quietly. One time it was the true heart opening, the other times are only limbs and trunks. I worry about Jam. Hello Robert somewhere - Sitting in heart's confusion, so much has come and gone. A costly failure rewarded by happiness, catastrophe brought on, its consequences turning over all down the line - A frightened baby brought through the worst of it, a friend shocked, and here's an unexpected husband giggling in yellow shorts. And then my friend Jamila crazy with how much she wanted to be a father - who looked after the sickly end of the pregnancy, was there lying at my back through the labour, roomed with us the first week, paid the midwife, walked with the baby every dawn so I could sleep - was displaced. Thinking of it is like screaming.
27 Going with the little to get him out for morning coffee. Crossing the room naked, the shape. The beautiful hotel corridor. At the Golden Horse his kind happy small eyes with rays. We are in the middle room sewing and vulgarly laughing when the motor stops in the lane. Who is it with her. Looking north. "Rhoda is lighting a cigarette." The jumblesale teeshirt that was already past my time (the way her house was). Trudy in a dress-up shirt and purse gets into the van and they drive away. 28 Almost dark. The award for a painting of a horse and rider rearing into clouds. With --- --- being the fastest skater on the race ring in the gravel pit. And that he failed grade two. Another face and mouth visible then, he covers his mouth. "And you'll be staying with us for another year." Crying, "half a doughnut." I felt so near him then. Further on, when he was interested in the subjects, he couldn't read the assignments or write the little pieces. "Let's take off our clothes and get into bed." I fall asleep. We wake at one, lively
wedding dance at the Ukrainian Hall. The baby feeds steadily one breast then the other touching my side with his hand. Monkey Michael puts his arms around us. Sunday morning. The good days, so open to sky's force, dawn. The dormer I see from bed, looking east, is all clear before the sun rises, even, and I take the baby out into the sea of fire. I was in hatred and now pain. And wonder. The way Michael loves. Wondering whether I've been so uneasy with Jam and them and Roy because they did
always patronize me. Jam you didn't know it. You always had to overarch. You didn't take me as equal. When I tried for who I wd have been equal to, it was always unstable unreal pained protesting. He loves the way I do. Crying to see my ground again. I've given her hers too. The way her bargain was I'll have you if you let me play man. The way my voice would go high. Then her contempt when I was off balance in it. Vengeance when I outright said no. The spitting dream. Helmer. Not to be proud but to see that he loves because he knows. Becoming smaller is this. In J file only one of the letters. Not the flame of the forest. I have to give her $2500. 29 The turn brought M's escape. There's brittleness, is it true the way I feel my escape too, from her and them and the way I went on not liking myself. What am I closing the way to. Doubling back. Rudha-an the red one. in the Highlands planted beside farm buildings to ward witches. Why don't I like it sounded - I like it mentally sounded. Roan.
The dream where he said he was Luke. Writing notes, sending his photo and name. What's wrong in it. Only that I'm covering shock. I wasn't shocked, the pose took care of it, and then there was only a defiance on the left side of thoughts. Her pose and then the distaste when he came near. 31 Hate. Defeat, loss, failure, slander, dishonour.
1st August 10 weeks yesterday. When I sang into his face his body squirmed singing too. Squeals came out the mouth. Lying in the bath getting warmed from journey in the rain, I fold down from the waist to put my face near him and sing in the warm echo chamber.
M is kneeling on the kitchen floor peeling potatoes. Shoulders and flanks. The white shirt. A trusting elation. Yesterday standing after sundown on MacLean Park grass looking at children running like the house martins. Not visible full moon. The beautiful smile of the nine year old Chinese boy, light like Luke. A little girl standing to cry with wide mouth and arms hung down "like someone singing the national anthem at a hockey game." M watching the littler one in a long dress comforting her, four little f.o.b.s standing in a group wherever they are. We stand like statues, I put my face on the back of the shirt, feel warm through it. The kids run nearer when we aren't looking at them. The baby sleeps. The way the boy smiled when he saw me see him skid, I felt I've come out of my wrongness, I'm not banned anymore. I'm not ugly anymore. When we were lying down M was seeing the group of children walking. Liking how he took an imprint like I know. Looking another way. Jam in her dismantled house. The appalling thing I've done. What I see is her holding
the newborn bundle - her baby. Is that why my memory is so thin. When I see it, at the end of the whole story, I stand in shock like the little girl with her mouth open. 2 Sitting in rain twilight he eating I telling. Looking at each other seeing the racial types. A harsh father in the clothes I say of 1700, he of the 13 and 14 hundreds. I imagine him seeing the small dark woman of a household. Later standing in his arms in the bathroom I see someone else, I saw him when he'd talked about failing grade two, it's a smaller darker softer face, steadier and younger. Just now wondering is it Rowen. I need to write teaching myself. The flux of persons. Structure of time. "No distinction between child and parent on the unconscious level." 4th This Sunday - wanting to see the longer story of these 10 years ending. The way I was with Jam in the last years resentful and helpless. In the first years, frightened. I didn't learn her without rage at giving over.
6 Ashamed of M, not wanting Ammi to see him. He's ashamed of me in front of Becky. "'So you settled for this?' I could have found someone with more life than you but not so strong on the outside." Looks, education. "All you do is think all day, you don't do anything." 7 Diffidence. Am far drawn back again. How can I be ashamed of anyone who sits as beautifully as you do. At the window. He was in love today, an old woman, a moment of light on Hastings. He and the baby looking in each other's eyes. The baby's cries of joy. His kicks in the bathtub: wild swimmer. Playing retard with him. A silly dream of the man bent over singing Now let the king sit down. The audience can't sing for trying not to crack up. I and my mother next to me. (God save the queen.) These evenings I get in the water, he sits by the tub talking and playing. Then he goes home.
8 The gardener in blue overall Choy sent with ideas to transform the garden - all green lawn - 3 white-flowering bushes - I'm shouting and crying about my little plants. Up and down Burghley Rd trying to find my house where I left the baby, back again from the corner. It must have been here where the houses are rubbled, climbing over brick and plaster, an apartment in the back, a covered wall, might be mine, but the people who live there are still there sitting in chairs. The baby wakes me. Again in a very broken night. 9 In a class, library, messing around. I'm behind, can't do this stuff. When they go out I grab a bar from the ceiling, start acrobatic poses, just legs stretched parallel to the floor, but then further
gull's balance. The beautiful pose [sketch] I see reflected, doubled, outlined on the window, beautiful tits with nipples. Wake sexy. Sleeping again with Rowen in pink sleeper, white blanket, in my arm, I dream a space like a train station. Something happening, a turbaned man in a beautiful green silk coat embroidered with red runs south, followed by another like him, running and maybe bowing, their prayer time beginning. The embroidery in a wide band under the arms. I make my way toward that end, it's seeming
like a mosque with different colorful religions set up every few yards: a man drawing on a blackboard, fine little white line drawings of a lot of things, a line through in the air. The woman standing speaking in acrobat tights is saying perhaps that she no longer walks the wire - since he's there? A huddle of another kind of religion, I'm sitting gogging at. They simply shove me out, I must have been on their carpet. Down at the far end, the acrobat woman again saying she's too fat now to go up in the air, showing her limbs. It would be dangerous. But it isn't the same woman. I see her behind, she looks fresh and beautiful.
Biting fingernails. Saturday 10th Simon and Garfunkel. Silk scarf belt, you dance so well. A moment of sun from the west window. Yellow door and raincoat on the banister post, light up the hall, that shines into the blue room. You kindle too. Let's go lie down you say in your best voice. I'm sad. The red shirt. Dancing with Jam at Press Gang, complete joy when she could and would. 11 An exam essay - feeling how I used to mobilize in front of it to a wide grip - it's flabby now, doesn't seize, doesn't move forward. Send him away with the baby - lie down - morning pain - it's not Jam it's Trudy - that was meaning the way she got me working and feeling. When I wake the blue van is downstairs. Heart is a black clamour. Feeling her the mentat magician - at the next playoff - I didn't keep myself sharp with her - I didn't sustain.
Watching her as an enemy Another sense that if she's taking it on I'll clarify too What makes me susceptible to this war They're downstairs now - imagining - ah - young self - taking everything with curiosity In the tarot systems the way interests are filed together that I know separately but don't see the connection of. The persons are stations. He's crying with tears Michael says he's hot.
Last night the air song, long dark deep song. When I go to the window after a long time hearing it, it's a dirigible. Ponderous turn with lightbulb display running on its side. We're laying him in the tub in water not too deep, letting him play. Kicks, strikes, can go on a half hour independently. 12 Burton died Aug 3rd. That one - he's thin and strained - he's fair - he says the way I send him home in a nice voice is SICK and I'm STUPID and envious. He walks back and forth rocking the baby. I watch. He makes faces trying to find words for how INSANE I am.
This morning.
Explains why fire thought an element 14 the mistakes of men minds:
King and queen are sperm and egg, that's why royalty is about babies Adam and Eve are R and L space age prevision
[letter to Trudy] This door locks from both sides now. You're anxious about your mail. I don't and won't interfere with it. You could put up a mailbox on the outside of the house, or have it addressed to Rhoda's, or I'll go on putting it under your door. When it gets cooler we can negotiate about the thermostat. If you burst this lock I'll put on a bigger one. Your own basement key. - How much is it true that the sentences I 'hear' are also the sentences she's or he's also hearing.
M: You're afraid that your image of her will be gone. You think you need contact with her actual self to have your image of her. I was thinking of it as my program of her. That's what she didn't give me. How competition is stealing. "I don't want to share the baby." 15 Does esoteric and degrees of initiation mean the material is not understood. - A rule that. My sense of the 'trees' as one structure through all the eras of de-code. Black dog shadow. "You can have it [the thermostat]. I don't want that kind of heat anymore. I don't mean not paying the bill, but that kind of heat makes me too ill." T: "Cheryl wouldn't have noticed you. I saw you first. You saw her." She's saying: I knew Jam before you did. I'm saying: Take her, I don't thrive with her.
Both J and I overspilt. "Such a long loyalty" and break into sobs that make him sob so I stop. "Walking through the whole night with the black dog. And white snow. The neighbours would go by that knew me ever since I was a baby. They'd say Michael what do you do out here all the time." "I had lines [lions] going through my head and there was nobody there to help me." Sob sob. He describes the two people. He knows right away.
Completely different. A memory of pain, mechanical. Identifying with the thoughts. You're not using thought. Ego making its nest. Perverse bad art, no joy, no giving. 16 I think what's coming in tarot study is a discrimination of state - the state not the person. Morning instruction with cards. Speed - he grumps. I lie down, stiff body, count it down to electromagnetic swarm, swirling in head. A phrase. An image of looking under the bed upside down. Take him on my back on the bike. Woodwards. Evening get pained and lonely alone in the darkening house with my enemy. Music. The glorious west. He sat listening to Wagner when he was in wild emotion. We lie singing notes. The quiver in the feet at some interval. Go out. The trunk and leaves of the young maple. "Do you see how much space it's in."
18 M's complaint. Goes home hissing suck-hole, ass-hole.
The new moon. Our mood will change. When he came around the corner and saw the moon suddenly, that it's a mirror. This afternoon's session. I saw J. A corridor and room with sun, Hong Kong. 19 Fear and helplessness, having no will no past no future to protect him. Looking at the baby. He says I wd be sexual again if I released the way my brain is biting onto something. Oh! I stop feeling when Jam isn't there looking after me. I'm afraid of social degradation. I'm afraid to seem to be married to you. Married to an inferiority. Offensive: the way I eat. Want to make sure it's dead. Microsecond flick at my foot. I see him in the taboo - is it hopeless because of that. His drawings coherent and fine now. "Do you notice the part of my brain you want me to give up is the part I'm better at than you?"
20 Dawn pain. Tarot questions:
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