| aphrodite's garden volume 3 part 1 - 1986 march-april | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
8th March 1986 Hello book - who's here - a rasp in the cradle - a man unable - light, breath - Jean this morning, what Theseus said, with wet eyes. 9 Imagination amend it. To hypnotize anyone by placing them on an unstable platform in a pitch-black room and swaying before them a rainbow pattern of light that causes them to lose balance. A voice has audible and inaudible FM; under stress, only the audible. I began to pick up things at the microscope, not with ocular vision but with my mind's eye, and then made them visible Focusing an extra-conscious part of the mind on the notion that the plant be blessed and feel loved, then the two become a unit to pick up sensations from a third thing, a sensitizing process 12 Cheryl artist in black and silver standing beside big black and light panels. Jan-Marie in black a same slight distinct body next to me rapidly thinking. Michael turning on the radio heard Jam. Yellow roses and freezia, small cream colored candles, beeswax-scented flames, poplar wands in earth jug, bright wood tabletop, armchair. Stable pleasure of the shape of her face, J-M. Pulling two cards for her and child, Temperance and Strength. The dream of big cats and little animals and pool and her sister not to feed the small animals to the big cats. [With Joyce] Came out of it sad. I could try the little prince and the fox, she said - apprivoiser. "You have to be there every day at the same time, you can get mad but you have to not leave." Regretting him [RM], my violence and flight. "I know what it's like, I know what I'm aiming for " - she's nodding - "but it's very hard to find, somebody who isn't frightened." "You're right it is hard to find." The kittens, dresser drawer, second from the bottom. Hope chest tea towels Anne remembered, Monday, Tuesday, etc. The memory of imagining her dead so I'd have the treasure. Michael grey this morning, all bright this afternoon in his dancer clothes, he'd discovered that he did mind his mom going off with his dad doing unseeable things in the bedroom. "Certain things I like, like the image of you with the baby." My birth was induced. [Mary has sent a story she wrote about my birth] 13th Painful waking from a dream that said it again. With Tony kissing, but his wife - trying again - touching his thigh makes him take off his clothes - "she'll be back now" - just starting to touch his arm - she arrives and he's on his feet dressed and I'm sunk. Thinking about the diaries of Jane Somers absorbed by these days - her way, ashamed, falsifying, glamorized, of talking about being an aged body now and going on for worse. Doris Lessing 1984 The diaries of Jane Somers Vintage 16 Saturna, Sunday. Dear friend, basking cliff, full sea, gracious arbutus, summer blue. The lovers are speech and sensation. Cheryl and why I can't stand her. When I couldn't stand her. Raving crow. Her voice standing on a high pressure jet. I realize I'm worn out, stop blank, separated into disbelief. The night after dinner, fire gone out, yelling and laughing in the cold, stopping her. That obsessed theory is animus, now I know. Doesn't observe. Repeats. "I walk through it" - the mass of her work - kind listening and supporting - society daughter - sharp informed sayings - then also babytalk voice - were you and Jamila ever very young together - meaning you and Jam were dead sticks together, I and --- did better than that - telling her the times feeling humiliated and beginning to feel a doubt, she'll use it. "I found your body captivating." Hating the quick way she blanked that: you don't count. Over the cliff on a goat trail along the edge. The dippy fall into wood-butcher land - why those meetings with an other are so sore. Upstairs library, fireplace and full shelves - next to it, hotel bedroom, Colonial window, live sun from orchard garden, flagstones and gate. From a bedroom corridor coming by surprise into that big room in the center of the upstairs, a mind unexpected. I miss you Jam Jamila. 18 Heart meditation. Warmth and liveliness. "In all directions around the earth everyone, those being born and dying," voice cracking, "those who are hungry and those who are greedy -." Michael's mouth. "You've got the first stage down. The second ...," he folds my finger down, "... is teasing." But I have to give you enough so you can remember it. The balsam poplar carved up, a hedge woven around her porch, flat nose daffodils from Saturna into the back corner, violets, seeded snowdrops, yards across the alley dug up for City Hall drains, workmen from early on, inspectors, spring cooking. Hyacinth and poplar buds. Looking for you on the street distant one. Two months. The sequence of states, quiet alert, helping transition, recognizing windows, as Montessori, enabling circumstance for concentrated work. States we like best. Neurochemical sequence patterning. Of lifelong conflict with adults, develop only defensive and repressive states. - Small farmers can't get ahead because their initiatives are actively blocked by the landed elite who are threatened by any advance that would make the village's small farmers less dependent on them. 23 Pictures on pink paper. Particular voices. Her strong images. Unusual beauty, unusual language. Exciting to be in my own my own, so much to say. Reading that Mao's China was only one generation. His and my combination of peasant and intelligent, the way I surge when I think of working for everyone, the way they surge when they can work for themselves against everyone. Lis Rhodes UK 1982 Pictures on pink paper 16mm, 35 min 25 men / landed elite / restraint / urban / colonial / totalitarian / super-ego 26 [with Joyce] I'm trained not to feel/show pain. The man punching the woman. What I should have said was, Look after yourself. And not in a kind tone. Where we left it. She says "You choose, you make it." "I decided no one would choose to be like that." In China the family and profit are winning. Cities are winning, owls and hawks are sold for food. Came out of it sad. - They can't compete and have to sell land. Food aid helps to support a narrowly based unpopular and therefore militarized government. Food needs of home dependent on active maintenance of distorted land use systems in other countries. Advertising campaigns local companies can't fund. Increasing concentration of economic power makes political democracy meaningless. A food-first economy would unite agricultural production with development of viable rural communities and long-term protection of soil and water. To make the US less of a burden to the rest of the world. In a world of extreme power differentials no such thing as food interdependence. Hunger is caused simply by exclusion from control over food-producing resources. Public money is most often used in a way elites can monopolize. A fixation on export agriculture continues because while harmful to most, it is highly advantageous to a few. Elite landholding, government and consumer groups, multinational agribusiness and international lending agencies. Agriculture increasingly seen as an arena for speculative investment and a way to earn foreign exchange to ease an economic crisis whose roots are unrelated to agriculture. 40-100% of present and to service past debt, forces all-out export effort. 27 Yesterday with Joyce, trying with Michael, Al Reimer's story, "innocence and hope, an inner radiance was gone." Dedicated to the survivors, their children and grandchildren. Chortiza, Molotchna. With Oma and Peter Konrad. What they were reading, what was broken, estates and orders. Al Reimer 1986 My harp is turned to mourning Hyperion 1. We were lying down together, belly swarm, I was a girl because he liked the film, and Joyce said Look where you are. I was dreaming he'd become a grown man. He said, I was wondering whether to ask if we should take off our clothes. Glad to. Acute and good. Kissing the way it should. Now he would shift over in and it would go on as this simple home and I'd be released to love and gratitude. I had given and made way for him as if he was the man. But it had come to the moment again where he was finding ways to explain why he wasn't hard. 2. And then gets very stupid. You know very well that . But I know what I know. "I touch you in a way you don't know." My soft theatre lost on him. Erotic gender is one thing but social gender is another. "I don't know how anybody can stand it." She says that's being affected by how I'm seen, standing outside. Being affected by the texture of how it goes with him. It's true I'll give myself to sex but not to him. In the sensation of Cheryl's offhand, she's saying Don't lead your mind, let it lead you. Solar plex sore and then the whole belly pot round, my mother's, simply, otherwise vacantly, that - "You don't count." Speaking dramatically as if she'd made the line before, "Ellie, have you ever felt included in anything?" "My brother and sister, my women's group in London lots of things that didn't have people in them." His apprehension and mine with Jam. A threshold he called it, "cultural level," something true, I knew I couldn't come into her body knowing my way. I didn't know my way, the cloud of the system of her senses was standing alongside me. I had no match into it. I wouldn't agree either, I aspired. This evening I'm at the window in the wicker chair seeing the intersection. Roy at 2 in his night, the kids and Sara asleep, comes down from Luke's room, drunk at first. I make him laugh. He says What? It gets night. "Black umbrellas going by in the dark." "With Chinese people." "Yes." Rowen has made his way alone down the corridor to the north room. I was listening to his humpy way, not certain where he was, and then heard by his breath amplified in the empty room, that he had turned the corner. It's seven, a wet morning. Starling on the next roof. I was conceived, if she has it right, around the 16th of June 1944, in a sexy time. 29
The baby crying. I make him cry by putting him away in bed. What's wrong today. Empress. What would make it right. (Ap), material gain, wealth, contentment. Raining. Home with the li'l kid. Laiwan visits. We talk about suicide. - People who are working for community are optimistic, competent, self enjoying. Learn. Solve problems and conflicts. Robert in a desk in a school room close to the back in the righthand row. I go all the way to his home high school, find him there. He's sitting in the same position. It's wide fertile farmland, like Minnesota, black silt, small trees bosc. The yearbook, looking for him in it, his writing, notice only wonderful photographs, black and white people and things. A young girl lying on her mother? under a sack. The head showing beside her of a little newborn. Marveling at their quality. A community day maybe. People perched bravely along the wires far off the roof. When I woke at night I thought it was about animus, where it is in the brain, behind the ear. R hem. Not his writing I was looking for, but thrilling black and white images. The bird people. 30 Burghley Road. Looking in the front window, small boy, East Indian, young father vanishes again. I say I used to live here. Front garden the privet clipped back hard to 3', bare earth. Looking in, doors and mouldings still there, white, white kitchen in the back room. inside it's less the child and more old relatives. "I'm from Alberta," heh heh. They talk like farmers too, from room to room not certain, women going into the cooler, an actual cold room, and white vapor in the instant before they close the door after themselves, must be the deep basement, under the basement I knew. The back bedroom, all different here, windows are enlarged but they're up so high. A ricketty metal ladder with two sides. he climbs on the right and I on the left, to look out at the backs of the houses, London, on the corner the brick chapel, a wider field cleared, the buildings next door razed. I climb down fast, he totters, yells, catches himself. In the bathroom with him or some him washing tiles with a cleanser, they're twice as bright like the Sistine pictures. Call Doctor Ooli ---, spells it. It's Dr Barber, he's still alive? Here it is wake up Sunday bright and windy. In the night, there were movements in the house. I walked in the corridor and said Who is in here? It was wind, and moon convex waning at south zenith through the bathroom window. - And when the phone rings it is Ammi inviting to go out to the dyke in this glitter. Hello. Her big strong voice. Well today is likely. Because of reading nonviolent problem solving feeling alright I'll be friends. On the harbour industry road in the wind. Short wavy hair, who does she look like. Later I see it's me in our middle early days. Nepal. Royal Nepal Airlines. Shit in the streets, people who looked like her, and a man who said to her "We need a woman here." Brahmin and celibate, Madoo. When she talks about him shying her eyes continually to her left. He yelled after her and she felt at home. In the hotel room leaving the door open, the way two men would but two women wouldn't. Beaming at her. The light of plants. Photosynthesis. I am instantly resynthesizing it. The way we absorb the colors of plants. "I wouldn't call it imagination." I'd call it love. Eager suddenly. "I wonder whether when we're absorbing the colors of plants, it's that we're identifying with them." I meant being them. I am being the plants I see absorbing light. I am absorbed. Her puzzle she says about what seeing is. The way she doesn't see the mountains to tell her which direction to turn to go back to town. "There's a city there, and another one there, but where we are is quite nice." Loving to see the blueberry fields a buzz of red. "When colors began to come into the twigs." Is what it is and always in motion, at various subtleties. "I wouldn't call it imagination. I think we see very differently." "And crystals." "Cells." "I missed you there." "It was nice of you to send me a postcard." "Ha." "I have committed the baby to Michael. I mean that Michael is really committed to the baby. More than I am." "Mei-lin and Hava have a beautiful baby son." She was nearby. A pang. And how is't. Him there, how is he toward. Unstaid and skittish and all motions else. 31 Rowen looking at the cat in the storefront window electrified and leaping toward it with his arms, then drifting off, then leaping and exclaiming, then going dull. The cats' voices telling them as we don't know them. Baby says ga-ga-ga-gay-gay. Michael and I find a plywood cabinet. I carry two drawers on the pushchair, he the frame on his head. We've seen a baby bed [in it]. His face looking at a painting. How can you be so young. He gets the wicker basket bed, I get the deep box. We watch Billy Graham. 1st April Murder. You can't change and I can't change if you are still there, OR you have to change. In Tuesday sitting remembering. The diamond totality of presence. Them - what I was learning and hoping to learn. Diana and with the candle, sitting, Rowen in the next room after he's yelling lies singing with a ball bearing bubbling in his throat, wandering. I have to laugh. 2 The female child betrays her mother in sex, the male child in power and harm. Non-violent struggle. Adherence to truth. Ahimsa refusing to do harm. Non-cooperation and civil disobedience. 3 For April - stop coffee and tea - some fasting - yoga and effort - sitting every day some hours - and doing - exact eating - no TV and newspapers. I want presence beauty and interest again, to see Rowen completely and not miss him. 4
5 To be all I can be, to know universe for all it is, to support the same in all the rest. I feel uncomfortable and dissatisfied when I am a winner, but it is important to me to excel. Our cultural habits are, in relation to winning and losing, crude and contradictory. To win by its method seems defeat. To go on losing drains my will to live. A consciousness to enjoy winning must retreat from the part of its totality that is the pain of losing. By perception, comprehension, radiance and freedom to find the way for all. It is the nature of unwholesome states not to share and in every wholesome state lovingkindness is present. Arahat one with no secrets. Saturday He's called Beauty now - hi Beauty! Brown and pink, bright mouth, perfect little teeth, nose a brown knob. We were together all day. Five o'clock, in sleep suit, blue tweed sweater and brown hat, arriving at the corner of Hastings and Jackson. Man-man leans against crossing button post, the shape of hat and legs, and ... "Very nice!" Green Harris tweed. Bright classic man. Perked to flirt. "It's because I like to be seen standing on the corner with this fine-looking jacket." Ponytail flips and there's a boy in a car, looking at me, I can see over his shoulder. "Rowen bit my thumb hard. I screeched. He took it solemnly, put it in his mouth, bit it again very gently." 6 Leah gives me a bicycle. Sky's drawing on the wall above the table. A stiff pink rabbit. Small patches of life in the lower zone, green, but unconnected. Quite a big patch by the rabbit's two pink protrusions. A middle zone harshly demarked, mineral, or night, uniform purplish grey streaks. The rabbit's tall stiff ear, detailed senses, and emphatic square tooth, head down to the shoulder, are in this intermediate band, dense. The curve of standing ear, with the small sun's arc risen into purple, suggests the unrisen circle, son, unborn into the free space that exists, third band, sky, dark purple. Garden in the aft. Last night the junky rooms under the porch, rotten wood, I had cleared, two rooms, I could have my own space in, a woodstove, electric light, water. Night before, turning into the City, narrow streets with restaurants, find my way into a basement corridor behind the scenes, excavation, some hotel staff, artifacts, Quieter. To look out the window. Watching Rowen's intensity learning objects. Crept to the edge of the top step, leaning over patting it, just balancing at the midline. I'm holding a fold of his sleep suit. He dares further, over the edge into the abyss beyond the first step, crowing with interest, talking, but precise with his limit, backing and turning carefully when he leaves. In the bath holding him to stand alone. He holds the edge of the tub, my arms on either side if he tips. He is a hard-working spirit. 7 With Rowen young boy and his small brother, 'Charlie' I call him as if conceding. Wanting to go somewhere on horseback, can we do it, big black horse, the boy in front, baby in my arm. Nothing to hold the rein, the horse does go where I want, until we're on our way back, stepping off a curb that's too high, a jolt, and I'm somehow turned around facing the rump. Now I can't do anything, the horse ----, something, shies? Baby falls with his head on a rock, concussion? A bruise, he looks alright. The first dream was hysterical getting ready for a reading I'm told I have, a coffeehouse, 11 at night. What about the 2 kids. The whole family thinking of coming. I don't want them there, that's a worry. Who can I leave them with. But then also looking for my work, frantically in the same places again. Soggy books, a scrap book with someone's drawings. Damp-seeming heaps in the attic. Then thinking oh Father shouldn't come, there's the erotic stuff in it about Jam. Whispering it to Mother. She loudly, Father thinks he'll stay home. Going on frantically shuffling things. Wake sore solar plex. Last one very strange, a café, looking at the food on the counter, is that a lemon custard? She goes to find out. Feels like a middleaged German women café. I wander into the next room, bare and damp, empty, like a deck too, some books by the 2x4's on the other side, 4, soaked. I look at the titles, one small leather-covered like a New Testament, is an agricultural manual maybe. Looked at them again but don't remember. Some change signals me to go back in the other room. I'm called. A voice asking me something, wants to see me, whether I'm Black Hawk. Flashes of lightening maybe, a sound, in comes a motorized wheelchair with a huddle in it, rags and unseen face, some gabble. She goes back into her room, door to the NW like our bedroom was. When I go in I see she's on her bed. It's quite dark. Her light (want) very dim. In a black blanket a tiny white skull face. It's her. I try for a bigger light, overhead, but the switch just clicks. I've got more light from the long wand though, like a very weak flashlight at first but becoming a fluorescent white glow on the end of a long willow whip I hold over her illumining a bush in big white blossom, wonderful springing bush, the green and white in blue-white light. How beautiful she says. The light illuminating it showing also her sleeping platform, rotting wood, the little skull woman huddled next to a board rotted and fallen through. On the other side the same woman in a cold young beautiful black and white face that makes me think of Snow White's stepmother, looking out of her clothes just the face. I offer to fix her bed, it must be uneasy sleeping next to the broken board. She orders me out. I back away as it blacks out, throw the light-whip in toward her as I get to the door. Black Hawk she says again.
Falling asleep last night: seeing Trudy at the corner of the house with a square-bottom shovel. - Walking out, the morning, glinty, warming. At the corner where I emerge, something obstructs, an obscurity, whose face I suddenly see, grey, exhausted, dull silver eyes in creased flesh, pained, reluctant. Already decided to speak, instantaneous studying look, not unnerved though later it may be, say slowly in a long arc "E-earlie-e-e ." Stiff grey face nods. I pass. She enters the corridor. And then, from the console, a weedy boy in girlish clothes. Our crossed look strikes a harsh spark. A while to notice. Then going to the work bench where they are, speaking through Laiwan's introducing, large pale strong eyes, "Susan." "Ellie." "What?" "Ellie." "Ellie." 9 With Joyce, the new short-haired unrecognized Jam. "I resent -." That I could fight for. Making complaints requests. The solar plex pain. Go into it and see what's there. A scrunched person. Do it to the cushion. "This is you," sideways to her. "I'll explain in a minute" Joyce says in a hurry. If the solar plex pain is always anger. 10 Going on complaining and sorry, battling, sad. The refrigerator privily taken from the back porch, with laundry basket, Shakespeare, Paul Case and the love shirt, last of her gifts in my house. Being without the fine fridge, frozen little jars in top, icy raisin almond water on the shelf, and good yellow hamper in the closet. Very salty crying but brief and took the mourning with it. This Michael he was sad because of. A letter [from his parents] he says is nothing. Rowen's pink skin, ears cocked. In front of the hotel. Rowen is tied with the green scarf into the bicycle seat, Ellie is (delphinium) blue vivid shirt black braid neat houndstooth - black brain - escaping. Michael is dirty eccentric dancing pants gratefully kissing too long bragging and teasing about the little poke revealed, old joke, but simple allowing in it brightens me even as I'm bossily saying Enough, because there's always more than enough. Hi pup! In the laundromat with the kid standing holding the window ledge, whacking the glass with the flat of his hand pat pat pat his communication to it. Hollering. Turning his head with the big bus. Held up to see his clothes circling and falling. I like him for his demands to be given things to learn and his passionate eating. 11 The boy looks, what - dull in the eyes, angry - because I said this morning I didn't want to be mistaken by his family. One of his preacher rages, righteous bonehead and lifted finger threatening over me. Wants power. Not getting what I'm saying though I say it again: he can take it for himself, I don't have to give it. A lift of revulsion in solar plex remembering the scene. Rowen fretting, he with his corpse look, I standing up seeing it stand him back. (After, breaking into tears about the refrigerator.) Will you cooperate, pointing his face and ghastly finger, 6" away. Looking at the boy in the picture, whatever he is, what I can see definitely is only that it's nothing to do with me. I'm in any conflict retracting from the surface saying no I'll not have lovers' quarrels with this one who isn't my lover. And with it always grieving that this is how it was for Jam with me. A man too idle to cut his nails! Not that my soul was anything to show, but yet I greatly desired to show it. I thought of the weaver's house. I never could tell why this cottage drew me, even from a child. It had a narrow garden and a walk of red brick, an oaken paling, and bushes of lavender on either side the walk. Three well-whited steps led up to the door, and there was a window of many little panes, not bottle-glass. Above was another window. at the back, a patch of garden ran down to the meadows, and there was a second window in the living room that looked over this garden and the meadows, to the mountains. This I knew, because I went there once with a message in the old weaver's time. Upon the front of the house was a vine, very old and twisted. This was a rare thing in a place of such harsh winters, but the town was sheltered by the mountains, and the weaver's house faced south, so the vine throve, and though in cold season the grapes didna always ripen, in some years they ripened very well. What with the vine and the lavender and the pleasant shadows on the strip of the green lawn, and the lilac tree that stood beside the door, and what with the great weaving frame in the living room, which was comfortable with firelight shining on brasses and copper vessels, and very well kept, what with it all, I could never pass it without a look of longing. He'd wear a coat the color of a May meadow and look at you with eyes full of power and knowledge till your soul turned right over. To one that can feel the love and hate of others flowing about her without a word spoken, and who can only do well in warmship of the soul, even a little misliking is enough to nip the blossom. Mary Webb 1978 Precious bane Virago 12 In the texture of fighting thinking sure he's right to protest and I ought to share the money but I will not. I will not rent a room, do without Joyce, go back to starving. My movie he says did something for him because it made him feel I'm a master like he is. Worms creep in my stomach at that. Looking just now at the image in the little drawer. Jam's child face where the right is a thick get-ahead Indian face, greasy trader, the left a shock-white Chinese girl soul helpless, visionary, maybe crazy. Gathering her stuff to shoot her with the deadly finding of her book sent back in an envelope, crying over green ink postcard.
Seeing this letter and feeling in it, with love and compassion, Jamila's not lesbian. Her ongoing rant, and why no devotion was enough. If I comprehend, the war's over. I'm sorry I hurt you so much that you hurt me so much that I hurt you so much -
On blue paper 1978:
- That I'd have to keep double books, simply: something happened to her so she can't, it isn't malicious though it's spiteful and dangerous. Maybe it was loyalty to her mother, or maybe something that happened in the war, or of itself the war. If I hold to my separated comprehension I'm not in danger. How to keep separate books and still be an open heart? It seems cynical, because I confuse it with the relation to myself. So I've been helpless with her because I already have separate books, or at least the persons aren't mutually strong. The separate books are: The dream during the week, a pkg I thought from Andy, translucent plastic, transparencies in them, John Rowley's portrait big, wedding picture. A sheet of repeats of flamingo heads pink on blue. Telling M the long story, "Why do I stop seeing what I know?" "Because you admired her you put her into another category." The fine new moon. Chestnut leaf scraps. Soft evening. At the corner with a yellow 2-litre of milk and tin of mackerel. Paul hoists his window. Tall Epp in long black and cowboy boots on the sidewalk looking above his building. The war this aft: "Why don't you put a pillow over your head? Why don't you put something in your ears, why don't you die?" Have I finally said something bad enough to cancel what she used to say? 13 I'm in some kind of state, going to look at Luke sleeping, and he's not in his bed in his room, he's on the couch in the kitchen. And out the window I see a pretty white monkey face and the monkey climbing up onto a pile (from the left), and then, to join the group of monkeys already there. and when I walk past the stove I hear it whispering to me in a man's voice from the right side damper. I'm saying, walking in my house, this is a dream I'm in, that's why it's like this (though awake). Then my mother saying Don't leave me behind, putting her hand on my chin, strong pressure on the whole of the head, and then the rest of the body, her will clamping me completely. But I exert myself from inside with a contrary pressure, and then I feel the restraint starting to dissolve and I come free. It was my visionary freedom she objected to. "Mother is our materialism." What it has to do with not wanting to leave anyone out of what I know - not wanting to be protected - what's beyond that? "Having dealt with the betrayal of love sufficiently to release energy and attention" I don't want anyone having secrets from me. If anyone is holding a tension I feel it in the solar plex as a terror, and then unless I ask or say and it's cleared, I'm disabled. Early waking the kid still breathing asleep - trying to work with s.p. and before sleeping - I found something! Going almost to sleep, got there by breathing in light out toxin - suddenly felt it as a rapid pulsing of energy waves - because I'd got to the level where I could feel it. "Sensitive plate." "Telepathy centre," "fear centre," "power centre." Saying to Joyce on and on about how I imagine the solar plex. Wondering if it has to do with umbilical sensation of coming in and going out. Telepathy as physical. The hara is different though. S.p. is solid, clench. I demonstrated a person squeezed from all sides. What to do with the cushion. "Squeeze it." Sound is squeezed too. Imagining chanting! In church loosen the diaphragms to open them fast. Then suddenly writing a note [to RM], I regret being mean to you (not to say it wasn't a satisfaction too). Desire and fury got the best of me. The way you simultaneously come on to me and refuse me without in the least seem to know you're doing it drives me nuts. All the same, desire and fury aside, I like you (and dislike you) and am Yr friend, So who's it to - - The dream where I hear a woman singing clear true harmony with the man working at the dustbins, is it Carole come over to help - look out the window, it's T. Someone handing me a sheet with questions or tasks, # something, write a --- about --- ---, explaining it's for the retrofitted apartment building, co-op now, people like us have a chance to get in because the conditions are like this. She says, Maybe you could get that place you've been wanting. See it (dream in dream) as I've known it in other dreams, the graceful place. Kitchen with fireplace and east-facing balcony in a large was-rotted building with a door around the corner as if in Kingston, as if Union/Clergy Street. As if the street is east of the campus, the park and the high balcony though not on the street side also looks east. Something about walking home from downtown meeting a kid or them more kids, looking for the office supplies store, having to go back. A broken-down house. Maybe this one goes to the walking in vision. Some of this collection to tell M. The vibe and dream. Find him with the bug fretting in the wall basket, he redding up in white shirt and green jeans to catch my eye. His most glimmery, eye-and-lip, pinking up. "Lie down with me and tell me." The kid lifting his head and shouting. Get 'im out set him on my pelvic bones, he whacking Michael, I tell, then we put the kid in his bed again, he goes quiet, we finish telling, are just lying. M after a while breathing hard, not me though the arms around are closely attentive. A song he heard: if I told you you have a beautiful body would you hold it against me, today he is, the kind eye lines all together slight and intelligent eyes nose mouth and jaw. Eat a lump of hamburger squashed under the plate on a nest of old greenbeans. Good. Both pressing beans on to the bug in his little chair-table. A rabbit pellet pile of chewed bean strings by the plate. After, she wants to look. Will you smoke a cigarette and walk around. Against a sheet of photographer's paper. The effect of the doubleseam on a jeans leg, straight line where it best shows the curve. It's my turn. Got a match? Your face and your bum. The tilts. Leans over the chair. Tips his face to the window and then blows out smoke against the light. Through the white shirt a line of an arm, underline, moving. Sits in a chair with one knee up and winged out, hair spinny around his dome. Pretty. "Hey what it is is I've got my period!" "I know." In the hall when the baby can't stay anymore, going down to the bike, lowering voices, giggly, "Isn't it interesting how much sex you can get without doing it." "Yeah." - If anyone is holding a secret or tension I feel it as a panic in the solar plex. And if I don't ask or say and have it cleared, I'm disabled and have to flee. When I begin to lie to someone or not say what I know I feel myself having abandoned them. It means I hate them, I cast them off, I damn them, I deny them the possibility of being a soul. It's my curse on them. (Angry.) There is another way, dry and clear. I see the limits, or decide them, without consultation, and then simply act in my own light. I keep my strength but have a dry heart that I can't sustain. (Lonely.) Someone deliberately keeping a secret I feel as wanting to destroy my strength. The sensation in the solar plex seems to me to be a wound through which I've been tapped to send my life strength telepathically to the one who's hurt me. One way to stop the drain is to make them very angry. Then maybe I get theirs. 14 Luke in Washington, polite. Has to go and catch a plane. Jilly went into the Air and Space Museum and suddenly decided. Desolate after I realized I wdn't see him. "You should call your mom before you leave." [letter from my mom] "You did not need to fear the cows - no, they were to fear you so you could walk where you wished. Your 2-year-old self had that clearly determined." De Beauvoir died 14 April @ 78. "No matter how much help you get you are still going to be sick." [Trudy says] What it was about it (they didn't cure me).
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