| dames rocket 1 part 4 - 1975 may - june | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
Art which "finds and arouses points of psychological tension" and structures them toward (temporary? unsatisfactory? satisfactory?) catharsis. Gidal I think. Bergman "I have combined as dreams combine." identification / flattery The Slade notes on structural film / semiology etc still fill me with fear/defiance/shame: I flunked out. Was just a little country woman / a mother, and couldn't make it. Freemartin: hermaphrodite, imperfect female of the ox kind, "a heifer whose hormones have been overwhelmed in the womb by those of her male twin. She is born sterile and, sometimes, sexually malformed." LaPlace: Celestial Mechanics Piaget "Spontaneous feelings between one person and another grow from an increasingly rich exchange of values" - why sex doesn't of itself make spontaneous feelings? The erotic is not a value. - Some way to have conversations with my heroes - foes. - Draw some conclusions from my work with the collection of notes: the need for balance of the two consciences - that's the most important of all - a stricken sense of having done nothing, only dreamed, half-dreamed - need to validate myself with animus work well done now - need teachers now -
Material, which can be visible or not, and yet functions
Like a sugar cube in water substance/nonsubstance boundary. Grandma Konrad in hospital with a heart attack. When I told Violet my recurring dreams of finding the hidden room, she said That gives me a shiver. Also that I used to tell them stories with secret places. (Paul looks different to me because of the beauty of the small man with wonderful, frightening eyes I saw singing the whale song at the Greenpeace afternoon.) - What currents are bringing me scents of Ian, and Peter Harcourt? Lighthouse Park: I fell into silence, the kids' babble, and the family babble, and the tones of voice - so wasteful - I wanted just a grownup time, silence, coffee, elegant talk. The woods, I seemed to not believe them, as if they were a garden: damp, ferns, rocks, the ghost clearing of the outdoor theatre with its silky short green grass. The smell of stopping to camp at night, as children, being let out into that smell. Other smells: box, passed on the way to Luke's school. It's raining. Akasha so cosseted, delicate and babyish. And deaf? Judy irritated me fussing with him. The Sunday when Wain and Paul were here: can I make a single image of it. A monotone.
I liked their faces in the candlelight, two formed profiles. Felt a snuggle hunger for Paul's body. Trying to keep an equal distance from both. Yes, they were doing that too. Trying to stay at the same level. An unreality: realize that when I think of either of us telling Paul about it we would say, And what was happening when ...? Some good bits on the plate. Paul's picture of his father sticking a hot poker into a coconut, black hole smoking like wormholes in the cedar log. Wain dreaming the drawers in their coloured cook's dresser opening to make music - he would come in, in Pittsburgh, on her days off. Our stories for Luke. - Unconfidence. I'd like to break down with Paul. I told how the row of chestnut trees made me almost exult, then the lid pressed down, there was a click, the brake put itself on; and I was left accused. Paul said: Yes, the brake comes on because I am not living right, to be allowed to stay in it, and drew me the diagram of inverted cones, the points where angels come down. We made it a grid of angel chutes, like an inverted egg tray. - It's time I understood these letters from Paul, why I feel comforted but also cheated by them. "I want you to see me bleeding." I could never have written him a letter like the ones he writes me, which say, I want you, you have power over me, please be kind to me. Because it would be too hard for me to write it, I cannot believe that, written, it can be true. "... my other likings for you, yet I sometimes think that they are what you don't trust." "I seem to breathe a new kind of air when I am with you." If they are not true why are you saying them; what universe of easy thrills do you live in, your body so much less reluctant than mine, I'd like to be there thrilling too, but. I feel instead a reserve. Yesterday, uncertain of myself, rattled, afraid. "How I wish that you would make love to me, and put me to rest for a while, and let me feel myself confirmed in you." No no I like your pain better, there isn't another way yet for me to make you real to me, than separation, chastity; or else my pain. It isn't right to make such a thing of fucking or not, but it serves. What else should there be? There should be - we are of the time of life to be - struggling to build something. Our bio-clocks, our body time which must know Sunday is every seven days (and so is sad on Sundays) knows thirty is time for something other than romance. Intoxication: men's intoxication. Paul Paul I want something else, I want to work with you. I want because what you said about the stop on the chestnut trees to trust you. Don't be afraid, you won't break. Is this a longer courtship? I want you to learn to stop exploiting your affection. Sexual pragmatism: incapable of it. Sexually I have to be handled with such skill and confidence, it is a concavity in me: sexually somebody has got to have authority with me, not be weakened with sentiment for me, but stay somehow very firm and decisive, and that is why only Tony has seemed alright to me lately. Or is that too easy a description? In my dream last night, visiting Art Pape's house. Doris Lessing, an old woman, lived upstairs. Paul saying "until I feel high, and true, and sexually ecstatic all at the same time." John Rowley could have said that. I'm afraid to repeat that pattern. Something else with Andy, he's angelic already. - Right, there is something to be learned: we were beginning to learn it last night, and what was emerging was two adolescents, polarized way out into their own sexes: he being taught to value fucking, if she likes you, if she really likes you, she will. She being taught to value talking, if he really likes you he'll want to talk and not just fuck. From this polarizing, David [Cooper] complaining that women in his bed just want to talk to him, and that hurting my feelings, baffling me, maddening me. How I feel most men, even Andy, are stuck in that adolescence and their unreconstruction just makes me want to refuse them. John Rowley - being revolted by something infantile. Does the complement in me imply that I have to work on an adult reconstructed sexuality? Partly I have been. Also it means learning not to use that against men. - Let me appear an angel until I become one. Schubert/Goethe song. - The Dwellings book. Something I can hitch into. [May have been Lloyd Kahn 1973 Shelter ] - Swarms of dreams: why not a cloister. Now lately, when we just talk on the telephone, we've loved each other and our converse: we are learning to pull up floorboards - ha! look what's here! ha! it's under my floor too! - we're learning to pull focus in a certain way that's fruitful for us. We begin to speak like each other, because we spoke like each other - in our private speech - before we knew each other. His practicality: he is able also to do things. "A very bright and sweet Irish man." - What it is, is amplification, an amplifier with certain dimensions filtered or reinforced. - To say he's of another race, his image that we are two interplanetary messengers who have other errands but are dallying with each other. - Dreamed about Stephanie Judy, that she had left a box of things with me. I had to repack it, a long coffin size box, difficulty getting everything in. - "You are not very frank." Yesterday - riding the bus, floated through Bernice's breasts and velvet face, times and places, all sad, but came to Paul's house looking "distinguished and beautiful," fresh and young. Then waited and waited, when Paul came back the day was gone and he was speedy and out of control ("Other people are charmed by it, it's only you who can't relate to it") - the lovely sea smelling sweet in its saltiness, the great drift logs. Paul standing showing his profile looking long necked in profile - I imagined him very tall, with that strong profile and his blown hair he looked kingly, I thought of Arthur. The Kitsilano houses with plants, orange lights, sense of a homogeneous style of comfort and pleasure in them, their quiet yards, the street empty. I drag myself, very tired, to camp on the carpet, head toward the swinging birch branches. Paul in his bed. In the morning waving. Going to snuggle ("how phlegmatic you are"), long silent breaths. I follow his breaths exactly as I can. I feel unloved. The lombardies are lit up and the sky brilliant, windy, cloudy, he says the clouds and wind are like his childhood in Ireland. Father, Son, Holy Ghost: also King, Prince, Jester. Holy Ghost and Jester you are. There's a playful swing, and then because you're so in control, because you are not petulant, because I've been able to look at you in that brown gravy way, and because you are so dignified sometimes - put your hand on my shoulder like unpeeling my skin, little strokes, touch my nipple touch my belly touch my cunt quickly as if locating them - and then your breath changes, and you see how my back says yes to you. I'm allowed, I rough out your shoulder too like drawing it in the air, there's your bum so thin and slight, your whiskers, your hair the texture of Madeleine's. I wrap my thighs around you tight. But you begin to muddle and then I'm lost, do my best sadly to hug you, because that's what I wanted and couldn't have without this other genital something. But I wanted that a little too. In the end I cried weakly, said I was sorry to be so feeble, you patient and exasperating, telling me it's my soul, I should trust the fact that there's something between us, he finds me beautiful because etc. It took a long time for me to lean back and say "I'm afraid we'll stop being honest, and I really need that. Second, ah here's something I can really say ... it's hard to say it because I want to hit you with it and must find a fair way to say it: when we make love - I use the phrase because it's yours - I have an image of a floor with parts of me strewn over it." "Ah! And I have such warm images ..." "It's one or the other, either it's a straightforward dance, a simple dance that leads to a simple conclusion, something that's being one, it's love I guess. The other is erotic bliss, and engineered, and so not right. Only when it's gratuitous they don't come together; for you they are the same. You can see why I want to resign from it sometimes." Except that - I'm listening to a Herman Boll story [CBC] - I said it better and was elated, instantly firmed, at my success in saying what I've never said before. "Here's something: yes you muddle me because you don't follow your own impulse anymore - what would your impulse be?" "I hardly know, I've been so educated." "Educated how?" "You know, to last." ("It's only for you that I'm trying to change. Everybody else likes me as I am.") "Maybe I try too hard." I need your straightforward energy in this. Yes when we meet here if that's what we choose to do, I'm only free if you are, but not necessarily then either. If it's very seldom then there's the lovely terror of having you to touch me newly, touching you newly with real hunger. But let me demonstrate this sad theorem. Oh Paul Kinsella, the nearer I get to you, the sadder I must be, because the nearer I get to you the more honest I have to be, want to be, that's what I want you for anyway. And what I find is that if I sleep with you I'm alienated from my own sexuality. If I don't I'm not allowed to hold you stroke you kiss you and nobody will kiss me either. You love yourself the way your mother loved you, fair child. - You love Anne because she looks like that. When you parody her you make her sound like you. But "With you I think I have to be very clear and strong. You're so wild." - I'm angry today, I'm angry at nearly everything but shall I use this anger to query myself further about - ? Hugging kissing feeling up yes yes yes that's true and real, I trust that. But what does this being poked have to do with me - experimental. But my imagery, my dreams? I think fucking was in my real dreams when I was prepubescent but now - my fucking fantasies are cut off at the root of the penis. I like the phallus; it warms me if I imagine myself pushing it gently - like a dancing hand in complete control of the push and the pull (nothing flung like a fishing line, nothing dragged) - but Paul as phallus, Andy, that doesn't mean anything - it's always Tony the exception - and nonetheless it makes my cheeks pink and plump, and in my unsatisfied state it makes me affectionate too. What a con. Shall I check the list - Rasheed, seems to me that was okay, felt very little in the cunt, but the symbolism was straightforward and gay. Frank - I was fancying myself a sexy creature and did it with good will. Well. Ferdinand, Alain Oliveau, an aftertaste of waste and spill - gâchiche - Greg, friendly and phlegmatic, I seem to have had the hugging and kissing I wanted and he only turned to me once in ten days or so, and that was fine and friendly, except that I wished he would take charge more than he did; and in the end that blank disgust when I couldn't sleep with him even for comfort or kindness. Arnold - his willful wrestle confused me, I just hung on to see where he'd land, it was like riding a wild fish, he fancied himself as sexy but - his body seemed too near pain in it. Chris Cordeaux, oh yes, there's a good one, his squeaks and slithers so easy and truthful, delight and wisdom in 'im. Peter - limp worm he stuffed in by hand, disgust that's indelible, croquante, he snacked on me, I fought, I started fighting for the right to feel something, he dreaded that. You too only ever do it because it's what people do, and you have to do it in the man's way; behind him was wanting to be one, but corrupt, weak confused unwilling like me to find out that - what? Ian - full of play, improvising on his penis like piano, young and full of spirit, still believing in it, I went with him, I started to fight there too, with tears of humiliation (those tears that mean anger) to tell him he must touch me there he must help me to come otherwise I'd be shot out into loneliness while his animal slept, with lovely dreams of conquest. (In our talk it was the other way.) Roy - I just hung onto him, he muddled, I never knew what he felt, I rode like a burr and then he shouted and arched and I felt I'd been buried under him, except a few times that were real dancing, when we knew each other better - the once I came with him, on my own - times when I longed for him and couldn't have him, and all to do with the beauty of his limbs and waist. Colin - hunger, compassion, condescension, my body sometimes really heating, because I was calling it in some way, his lovely helplessness made me willing to let myself go although his fright made me try to hold on to it. John Rowley - there were some exact fucks but sadly what I remember best is pulling away from him in fury because he was serving me so that I felt like a swollen grub, furious because I want to love AND to fuse, sizzle like a fuse, go milky like fused metal - at once, otherwise it seems carnage. Andy - we could say it was his problem, dear Andy, the awful confusion and him not knowing how to lead. I've left out Tony.
I've always gone into them experimentally, hardly ever in desire. I did desire Colin, Tony and sometimes Roy. I desired Manuel! (There was no one else.) I don't see any clues. It isn't possible to say I shouldn't have - it was a way to know someone, and sometimes it was someone to know, sometimes not, sometimes there was enough soulfulness in it to feel blessed, sometimes not and then I felt wicked. But the actual genital join only rarely means something apart from the way it's the introductory ritual. - Another telephone conversation, lying quietly watching Paul expand and contract, myself animate and sag, talking about "going on automatic," the jig he called it; says he likes best to have long uninterrupted mornings because that postpones the automatism. His fanaticism about his brother Rory, "something demonic in him." The letter he wrote his mother, he found himself speaking more truthfully to her because of what happened on Monday morning. We said - yes, what would happen to all the rest of our lives if there were just one person we could speak our truths to? Evoked Gurdjieff - caught one of his contractions - the unspoken elements of the conversation - what we say to cover the thoughts we fear they might guess. (I was a Gurgjieffian good boy.) Evoked Lessing too. In the garden, a little carelessness with the seeds as if I don't expect them to grow anyway. The furrows. What makes the little poppy crystal break open anyway? Will it be a crush, a mass of leaves and flowers? I've planted so many things close together, like a quilt. Opening a hole in the ground for marrows and melons, a trapdoor in the grass. Thinking of Hammit and Darinka in the suburbs of Strasbourg. Darinka's thin face. Crying at her wedding. They went to Chicago. Memories that came with coffee in the BC Pavilion. That old attic. - "Today will you tell me the story 'bout the world, the real true story 'bout the world?" "Okay. If Andy Moostash were here he would tell you very well." "Yes, an' I like the sounds what he uses to talk. An' I like the sound of that (dog barks) an' I like all the sounds what are in the world." Playing checkers with Luke, he's lovely and has no preconceptions. How he cried when I was in Barbara's room and he couldn't see me but could hear me. Our soap-washing rituals for pinworms. "I think the worms are in my feet." Birds rustling in the wall, the sound frightens him. "Sometime can we find a hotel to stay in again? Cos I don't like to sleep alone." "Sometime can we go back to England? Cos I want to live with my friends, and my daddy-friend." "Oh we can't do that, because we need to find a farm!" "I don't want to live on a farm." "Your bloody fucking hand!" (I've absently dragged him over a curb.) "My bloody fucking hand!" I say and roll him onto the grass. He laughs. In the high wind. The daycare children hiding under a curtain, whispering, giggling. Luke's red and blue socks underneath it. I make it a good drama, draw it out, complicate it. They love that. I'm often impatient and rude to him. I often don't speak to his inner person - I avoid him and the chances to be intimate with him. That's wrong, I'm afraid Roy will become his mother with whom he can speak truthfully - I am already the father who toughens him. Oh help me be truthful with him! Help me to have truths with him other than my longing to get away - somewhere - and begin. I wonder whether it's alright, the way I'm noisy and direct and badtempered and impolite with him. He stands up to me. Should he have to? He and Akasha are very alike, except that Luke is more articulate and less dependent; and Judy and I are white and red, she is so gentle generous and responsible with Akasha, and I so rowdy, ironical and tough with Luke. Lately I'm even rougher. But when he was a baby? I was nicer. I think I've promoted his separateness. I remember insisting on mine, but was that because M gave me so much intimacy? Or because I got an illegitimate taste of singleness in the hospital. If Luke does end up liking me when I'm old and he's grown, it will be differently than Akasha likes Judy. She's more like Mother than she looks. - At Connaught Park Kitsilano this summer's last Sunday in May, we took a kite, red and blue paper, Elizabeth's Luke got, the far away [sheet] flapped and sank, turned; the kite would not go up, we watched the guzzlers and machos at a baseball game, went to try again, string loose on the grass, trees in a rim, roofs, wires, clouds, the mountains slate blue and very far away. It rose and I took a special care to pull it in tight and not let it out any more than it demanded, there was a middle distance where I had to pay it all my attention. String hanging in a heavy wide parabolic curve, it pulled more string between my two sets of fingers like a fish I was trying to reel out, fly fish, run away, I loved it, the red triangle standing steadily and just rising, my maiden flight, no help, oh, there it was! the white string curved up into a light area of sky where I couldn't see it, then it reappeared under the kite - when I hauled in string it seemed to be stocked in invisibility, coming down in a hurry, tumbling, without pulling the kite. It had been up there in a coil on a shelf. The kite. I lay down for a while with the string held at my chest, above my head, playing I was a sled in the blue heavens, pulled by a very distant red kite, smoothly and at a strength just firmly right. Playing baseball with the Awful League, late day, I kept hitting the ball, never had more than one strike, kept getting home. Little children, everybody laughing, Luke and a tiny girl playing in the dust on the mound. The weekend was precious time, I can't get it now; just write very blue sky. Yesterday the trees and broken logs leaned over rocky beach, the ocean was brown like sand, advancing all the time. We naked bodies looked curiously, with intense curiosity, at each other. Luke ran, splashed, in circles; the passage through rocks to the waves seized my body too with lovely exuberance. I fell through a cartwheel; looked down the beach for Paul until he came late in the afternoon. I was on a stump, with a tender naked Irish girl in an enclosure below. I was happier in my jeans and the fur vest. We were glad to see each other, perched on the log. Paul, why am I so glad to see you? Lying next to a log, the thin Norwegian man kindly looked at us with such wistfulness that we wrestled, fooled, puppied. I touched Paul's toe to give him an erection and a blond girl walking by knowingly smiled. As the light changed and the water advanced, and people went home and those of us who were left knew each other better, and Paul was being nice to me, a gaiety grew up around us. In the end we went home and Paul cooked chicken and potatoes, carrots and asparagus, Luke went to sleep in Paul's sleeping bag and we went to bed, and then Paul put his hand directly on my cunt and stroked it and soon came in and soon came and then we kissed each other very much and went to sleep, and apparently I turned to him and hugged him in the night. This morning when he went down to pee he wore a towel into the garden and picked a lilac and another flower, that was to wake me gently, and when we hugged this morning Luke came too and sat next to us while we very gently fucked - "Oh you're so fine" he said, and I loved that. Then we muddled again and I hid my face to say I was disappointed, but we had a good breakfast and took coffee to sit on the bench under the apple tree, and then we talked a little desultorily. Luke was next door with the girl, we talked about being wasted, he talked about not wanting to talk any more (last night he told me I mustn't talk until I really felt ready, so I didn't and was grateful and then told my sorrows and paranoia very quickly so he could mother me very quickly, and then we went out with Hal Ober to see the eclipse of the moon through his field glasses - it was a pink moon - looked like the pinkness in the lightbulb when daylight shines in it. Hal in his eager lumbering intelligence: he kindly said he liked my cartoon, I said how I liked The second wish and he was pleased because it was a fantasy private to him. My brown hands. Luke going to sleep upstairs, last twilight shining beyond his high window, I was loving him dearly - I'm so brutal with him sometimes. This afternoon, when we'd eaten the ice cream strawberries and bananas Paul seemed to go sad, said Luke was on his nerves, so I took him away - but was it something else, some shadow, or was I worrying him. Yesterday at the beach, last night as he watered the garden, singing to himself, he looked wonderful to me: there you are in your instant Paul Kinsella, your instant that won't come back, your 26 years you are so wise in, your private life, your loyalty to your friends, your writing desk: you've taken pictures it seems for the first time of your garden and rooms, lamps; in "those weeks." - It was a lovely weekend, now I'm wondering how he is; now because I've loved this weekend I'm doubting him, thinking of him gay with all his circle; we have some telephone conversations we hang onto, something deflects us when we're together, a gallantry and flirtation, little touches (Tony never did that), reassurances, nicenesses. He doesn't speak his impatience; when we stop doing that we are lost again. Because I invited him and he didn't come, I'm afraid. But all that's simple too: I've nothing to lose but my own variety. An edge. Remember the surprise: you are a good man, I haven't touched your source yet, I haven't heard your underground sad rivers, except in my absence. Dear man you've touched me somewhere, something is liking and seeing you. Now what. In my dreams - I woke straight from - somewhere. Paul in his dreams last night made love happily with his mother, and only misgave it when his father was about to come home. Runes
- Luke talking about squarewords (bloody asshole). "I think you shouldn't say squarewords because Jesus doesn't want you to." "Why shouldn't you do it if Jesus doesn't want you to?" "Because you'll go in the fire." "What? Who told you that? Did Mrs Mackie tell you that?" Etc. He tells me to repeat after him - he looks grave and ceremonious - looks in my eyes, takes full authority - "Do you know - how many - birds fly - in the sky - Do you know - how many - stars - shine up above - Should one - of them - fall (No it shouldn't) - God knows ...," etc. He said it movingly. Later: "Anyway, something is true if you want it to be true." "Do you want it to be true that you burn if you say squarewords?" "No, but I want the song to be true, about God." Last night, fighting with Paul, feeling two things at once, like two rivers one on top of the other, I'd look through my anger and see dismay moving below it. This week I've been making myself poor and then feeling sorry for myself because of it: other weeks I've borrowed from my film money so's not to have to feel poor. I've really wanted to be poor, resented it, bragged and complained about it, enjoyed privately the trip to the LCBO every morning with two cases, and then counting out what's left after busfare. Milk? Save a quarter hitchhiking. Spend a quarter on fat blue-red radishes. - Reading on tape. The black hole of the auditorium. Reeducating ourselves to do the simple, in public. Telepathy - must imagine what is read clearly Exercise - lights on - describe an object lights off - 30 sec - 2 sec. During a performance, before an audience of thousands, you can always enclose yourself in this circle like a snail in its shell.
From believing in the truth of one small action an actor can come to feel himself in his part and have faith in the reality of a whole play. "creating the physical body of a role" and by its aid the subconscious life of the role emotional memory - The garden's little fields are below, cut into the grass. I suck up quiet from them when I water them, back and forth to the tap with the white bucket and green jug, pour the water through a green plastic flower pot to spread the stream and stop it uprooting plants, skim it low up and down the rows in the new clearing, which is spongy with grass and chips. The water sucks straight down. In the second-last clearing the soil is too close and water runs on the surface. Lovely patterns are appearing: two hills, one of squash one of pumpkin, each have a bent row of small plants around them - radish and chard, well up, with lettuce. Next year I could do a whole plot as a patterned quilt. I'm picturing the plots 18" high, massed solid with leaves and flowers, a tower of pole beans, vicious heaps of pumpkin and squash vine, mounds of marrow leaves in the tall grass. Feathers of carrot, parsnip, next to each other, all crowded close with a little damp soil underneath. Onions with an undercarpet of blue flowers. Rhubarb under the ferns (the little cat sleeps under fern leaves by the yard gate). - Terry coming to the door. Paul there so long ago this morning, frying oysters in the kitchen, head to foot sunny giddy Paul flattering me silly from the moment he woke. There he was in his blue shirt, wide brown belt, corduroy trousers, hair standing out, bending down with a tin plate of grapefruit, my waking vision.
In his journal the long sober carefully paragraphed article on his speediness, he's literary in a certain way - his relation to the design of the bicycle. That was lying at the edge of the wall Ronnie drove his bicycle over, sun making a reflected sun on the water, bright bar of water between mountains and housetops like a fluorescent tube. We'd eaten salad out of the pottery bowl, strawberries, buns, cream cheese, smoked raw salmon, jellied waldorf salad (yellow) and watermelon. And 7-up. Because of lying white-eyed looking up at the white ceiling, white curtains holding back the sun's heat, looking at Paul's chalk-pastel face, hearing a high tone and a nearly inaudible rustle like bubbles rising in 7-up, my arms from elbow to fingertip tingling with an intense current, and that from making love with Paul so slowly, in his sadness and both our charge from this morning, and his still-present faith and hope (must talk to him about taking charge) and refusal to believe that he doesn't please me. He did wait until I came, I don't know how. Afterwards he said my cunt is sometimes "sweet" and I said I know what the word means. It is interesting, I'm having to admit I'm interested. - It's an energy. - Andrea and Doug this Sunday evening. Doug had a laughing immensity of gentle attention, a big centred presence; Andrea was being pretty in her long white dress and flowing thick hair, winding and posing in her shawl. We talked about how it is on Wreck Beach, about my Mennonite childhood, their Nova Scotia trip, their other journeys. They share a willingness to be social, she's more mellow when he's there, and he has such an impressive way of asking and listening, I feel he must be exceedingly intelligent to lend himself so well, afterwards I feel deficient in presence unusual, because mostly I feel I'm carrying the burden of criticism (not with Judy or Paul, or Wain). Rita's thin face ground into my memory this weekend, with the intensity of her need to say "I ..." and her complete flashy unresponsiveness. Sitting in Judy's long grass in the paradise of naturalized wild garden - the iris tall beside the empty pool, the cherry tree with nutsized green cherries, small birdhouses in many trees, the butterfly tree spread wide, Akasha and Luke's heads just visible bent over an ant in long grass. At the library and art school today I was feeling the existence of co-workers out in the world somewhere, and thinking how I must be careful to peg myself among those friends and not at the levels / in the areas Vancouver offers easy access to, like Paul's journalism and the tape-slide show. Judith Currelly, the place in the Yukon silence The first painting I saw seemed barely more than a change of light in the room ... a painting called Little Things .... These paintings depend on real light and time to be what they are, as plants do on soil and water . In this work also light makes openings in time. Nick Johnson - [letter to my mom - not sure this goes here] Hello M, Saturday morning, a little cold, I'm at the kitchen table with some daydreams and a fourth cup of coffee; Luke went, an hour ago, to the store to buy milk, and is somewhere playing with his friend Ronnie I'm sure, milk and change forgotten on the sidewalk. Our friend Luke had a week full of marvels: on Tuesday night we went to Michael's play. Luke intended to go to sleep in the aisle but whenever he put his head down there'd be a new song or something exciting and his head would bob up again. At the curtain call the cast came down in the aisles and when they ran up again they took Luke with them - he was in a tall man's arms looking grumpy and sleepy, but then when he saw Michael next to him his face lit into a smile. He was set down, the curtain closed behind him and for a minute he stood and frowned at the audience all by himself. Another evening we went to another play that had a live snake, gunshots, loud drumming, and witch doctors in feathers. I told him beforehand that if he was frightened he must hold Paul's hand, and Paul says he held it a lot. Yesterday on the way home from school, crossing the fairground, we followed the crowds into the Colisseum, and found a Shriner's circus, which we were let into for nothing because it was half finished - we had wonderful seats and got there just in time for the high-flying trapese act. The garden grew prodigiously this past week. I haven't spoken to you since speaking to you on the telephone, have I? Do you know Judy and Akasha are coming to live here their last month before going away? I'm looking forward to it. Judy and Michael and Akasha too are such really fine people they are a pleasure to know. Bahai has been good for them: they're like Early Christians or maybe Early Pagans, full of quiet, attention, kindness and hope. They have really escaped the age's poisons. I'm very proud. About sending Luke to you, I'm still not sure what to do. I can fly him to Grande Prairie, the flights leave here at 7:30 a.m. and get to GP at 11:30 a.m., which would be easy any day but Sunday for him and for me but costs $67 - he's too young to go on youth stand-by! Or else I could bring him up and scoot back here which would be cheap and more fun, but the art school is letting me use their cutting room from June 23 to whenever the summer school starts to need it which will be mid-July, so the period when I want to bring you Luke is exactly the time when I need to be working as hard as I can. Also I can see you more relaxedly in August when you come. Also encounters with Father always leave me so tired I'd rather it were after the film is finished and not before. So it looks like Luke will fly, unless I can find someone traveling that way. When would you like to have him? (When will you be rested?) He's keen. He's so well these days, he's so free and affectionate and full of invention I don't hezitate at all to lend him to you, I'm certain he'll pay his own way in sheer pleasure of his company. I expect I'll miss him but there are so many things I've saved up to do . You'll feel better this June knowing you don't have to teach again in September? What are you looking forward to? When in August do you want to come to the Coast? There'll be room for you here I'm sure. Maybe next year you could get into the habit of flying here on your own, it only takes a few hours you know, it would be nice for us if you could. I'm making a little guest room that looks at the mountains, next to Luke's room. I'm sorry the letters to you fluctuate so - the times of plenty and the times of nought. I have many letters I want to write, dear people I want to send some greetings to, and yet there are not many written in the end. I am not quite lonely enough, and I'm turning my hopes to the new roads here, that I can just dimly make out. Love from us. - This is June - I'll exhort myself; in three weeks I can maybe start cutting. This is the time to work out everything practical, to love Luke, establish what needs establishing in the house, to make connections in the country, work on my ca-reer and send out some cries for company. - Luke in his privacy: walking on the wet sidewalks today, "The tree is moving with us." Tree that escorts us as we walk in water. - Book in Duthies called Art in boxes. My box-dreaming flared up, woof. I thought I must build some boxes, find some boxes, fill some boxes, construct my agglomerate boxes, and think about boxes in relation to films. Pigeonholes on end. A box with an egg in it. Cabinet making on a scale I love. Crude cabinet making. Joinery. - It would then be, for us, a matter of awakening within us a state of new childhood, of a childhood which goes farther than the memories of our childhood, as if the poet were making us continue, complete a childhood which was not well finished, accomplished and yet which was ours and which we have doubtless dreamed on many occasions. Gaston Bachelard 1969 The Poetics of reverie Grossman - Gabriola weekend. Aunty J. (Janet) She is eighty. Red and blue plaid Indian cotton shirt, white silky hair blowing in a curly bob parted at one side, brown thin face and hands, almost no body. 70 pounds? Patricia's [Wainman-Wood] effusion is met with a humorous levelness. Her garden between the road and a drop down into a mudflat of Cowichan Bay where a swan has nested and sits on eggs that may have been ruined by the cows or dogs. White haired Auntie J works in the garden where everything is in order, an English garden, only a few vegetables, in the back. Clumps of perennials spaced in deep compost, bordering an English lawn. Honeysuckle in a wave over the passage between little house and garage. A small deck facing east? And under the window - ah! - one poppy plant, a deep red on four-foot stems, buds coming but only one open, a beautiful flower, a monument - ah! the red poppy. "I believe it is an unusually deep red, we call it the Cowichan poppy" says Auntie J. Her house, the room with windows on the sundeck, her father's (the English doctor from Gloustershire, near Cheltenham) collection of Chinese plates, her rock cakes served on small blue plates, the rugs underfoot worn to white threads, a picture of John Kennedy ("She has a picture of Trudeau in her bedroom"). Birdie, who had lived discretely in the trailer for many years, if she had married him she would have lost her Armed Forces pension, died recently at ninety, had succeeded a first and second husband. She had no children and was always thin and pretty. "My mother always said she was a selfish woman, but I think she just had a very definite idea of how she wanted to live." Wonderful lined brown skin, with a tight lean jaw - the roses, the dahlias, the broadbeans with leaves bitten to scallops. Quick light woman, her alert quality. Like Katrin's gran. In her rooms, the faded threadbare silvery Indian blankets, the faded grey green chair covers, the lovely air of time-shaped things, real things and a true eye, and enough money to cultivate. House and garden a picture to feed me. How'm I ever going to be a thin old lady? It's imperative! Past that - waking from a sleep - trivial and toilet dreams - in the afternoon at Gabriola, feeling the clarity of the light met by some new clarity in my eyes, having slept enough at last, ready to stay, but then we went home .... The browns of the rock coast, then blue water. On Saturday night I saw whales, back fin rising and sinking, I could see it only the length of its gasp. Five? Going north up the strait. Nathalie Granger - the suspense - what's its dynamic function - it is the energy of attention, it is the artificial flavor, the MSG. Brings out the savour of the house. What kind of identification do we take into it. - [photo] Vancouver Greyhound terminus 6 June 1975. - This morning, in a dream, I confronted my father again. "You ruined my childhood." I don't remember the rest of my accusation, but my posture seemed rhetorical. He put his head on my shoulder like Luke when I've smacked him, yet I afterwards moved carefully - in a stagy manner - to prevent him 'getting' me from behind. Told someone, Mother? I had to be careful because I'd told both Grandfather and Father what I really thought of them. Last night was reading The world split open and yesterday had feminist talk with Leslie, Marjorie, Brownie, and Susie. [first mention of Women's Interart Co-op group] - On Kingsway, having bought a bicycle, waiting on the street for the tire to be mended; the woman was next to me before I saw her coming. "Will you come and have an orange crush with me?" "Sure" I said. She had hers already, sat down while I got mine. Orange hair, very dry, faded in streaks - almost orange eyes with very well cut lids, not really orange, hazel, but seeming to match her hair in their paleness, a wool jacket buttoned up over a white and yellow dress. Her eyes were laughing intelligent young eyes, her mouth was the stumbling thick mouth, creases around it, rough, of a sick old woman. On her feet, under the table, pale blue denim sandals, pretty feet, good legs. She jiggled her feet and hands constantly. "You must have a lot of time to remember?" "No, I'm not pessimistic." She laughed, I laughed. "I was in the hospital 22 years, I don't want to remember that." "They operated on my brain." "What did they do to it?" "I don't know." "You should have asked them." "I couldn't, I was asleep." "You should have asked them first." "I dunno, cleaned it out, maybe." I liked her inventions of language, I liked her eyes and her neat slight shape. She came and invited me so candidly, spoke so candidly. When I went to get my bicycle she came across the street and wanted to buy me a peach. At the table she pulled a bracelet from her pocketbook and said "That's for you." I said instantly, "I don't want it thanks." It was pink plastic. She looked hurt but I think my impulse was not to patronize her. The bicycle. The new streets. The lake. The supermarket. The two beautiful loaves, with a texture like Hovis. Luke this morning, "Do you know who I'm going to marry when I grow up? You." "What will we do when we're married." "Not very much, we'll just work." "Why will we work?" "To get money." "What will we buy with the money?" "Just good food. An' I'll cook for the children." - I need, in my dialogues, to take up the other voices more completely, the sane parent, the sweet girl, the wise philosopher, the crazy woman. Wrote this when I'd just heard a wise voice. - Wake up this morning, know it's early by the silence, the birds, the greyness of the light. Just now I saw a shadow forming on the grey roof across the street, birds dropping through the branches of a tree. Knew I was sad by the way my thoughts were coming: Roy's deception with Sheila, my itches, a sense of body collapse, worries about cancer, my eyes, contraception. The sense of still not knowing how to live. Being responsible for Luke and burdened in my movement. Not being able to follow an instinct to what I need. Remembering that our lives are sonata-form, free within limitations etc. Therefore it's what we do with it, etc. But: look at the luck one could have, Elias and Christina, what is their luck? To be continuously in love with someone who is in love with you? This morning's sadness parade was maybe loneliness. Paul's away, but I'm not lonely for him. I find myself remembering his prissiness - Susie talking about how her latest man, although she "likes him as a person" is too effeminate for her, has a limp-wristed manner, prances. These movements revolt her. I guiltily thought of Paul and how I don't like his little pointed soft hands, his short arm bones or his little tai-chi shoes in which he prances. Then I pay by remembering how he doesn't like my fallen breasts, the hairs around my nipples, my strong back, my strong hands. He remembers someone who was smooth, fine, silky, small, smelled like a woman. I remember 'someone' who was six foot tall and strode, who smelled like a man, who had beautiful large square hands. When I was making my confessions in the Dogwood Restaurant he said "But don't you see for me you are a real woman." Ah I don't believe him. Is it an impasse? What if I loved women? - [photos of Malvina Reynolds]
Miriam Xios: an old woman, eightyfive, light, small, white hair in a drifting bun, willful brown face, creased everywhere but thin, with a lean jaw: eyes completely present under eyelids still intact, well cut. Strong nose. She has a small house, it is near a dangerous cliff, behind it a meadow slopes back, grass is long and has flowers - poppies, buttercups. Trod, it smells of clover. A white horse also very old pastures there. I climb the fence which retains the horse, pass the stockaded circular vegetable patch with its latched gate, climb a cedar red path through a stand of immense trees, and there find a house not much larger than a signal house, with a kitchen wing, a sleeping porch with morning glories in pans, and central, the long room with windows on both ends - mountains and water on one end, trees on the other. Worn wood, threadbare rugs, piano, old pots, old baskets. What does she do? She has written and continues to write books that free people from the stockholders; she gardens; she witnesses; remembers. She has learned at last how to be a friend with those she loves. She cries easily, she laughs only when she means to. She will die in a few years and has no fears of what she eats. She sleeps little. She is an efficient body, light on her feet. Thoughtful, no longer angry. She is astonished. People bring their friends to see her because she encourages them to hope for themselves. She has survived. Nothing in her is bent. She comes and goes. She is no householder. Where has she been? - She greets me and sets me at her table. I look about, she looks with me. She looks at me. I look at her then, I am shy and afraid. I feel she is my chance. "You could tell me what you want" she says. I know she allows me to rest with her. She will take charge. Miriam. I want to begin. There is an arm across my plans, saying not now. But I know it must be now. How can I move the arm away? "Learn it, see it, lean on it, look at it, describe it. Be excited, you will know it. When you know it, so that it can never hold you unknown to you, obey it deliberately for a while. Postpone. Describe yourself postponing. Describe aloud, say how it seems to you. Say what you will do instead. Imagine yourself, at other times, doing it from beginning to end. Take projects and imagine their process not their result, describe the parts and sequence aloud, or write them down. Write down and isolate exactly the points of difficulty. Beginning with some things that thrill you most, set out the first step, do it, the second, do it. Picture the arm pulled back. You need not raise it, it lets you go." Miriam, my body with its small signs of failure frightens and harasses me. I am afraid that my fear and harassment will kill me. I'm afraid of cancer and afraid of being afraid of it. I need a guarantee and trust, I need to believe it is not a failing body. I need in my own actions to provide my guarantee but I can't do things systematically, yoga or eating. What shall I do? "Right away, walk in the mountains. Go up and find a location, find a power spot. Do that tomorrow if you can. You'll learn the next thing there. It will be cold." - What kind of movie could I make of Sally, there's my crazy Jane and there could be others - her language - the separate parts of her face - she is another kind of creature and I identify with her, in my word salad - her flesh - her dress - be clear to tell her why she is in it. - In writing, does the breath emerge in some clenching and unclenching mental breath? In Uvavnuk's poem it said "moves me" means "to be in a natural state." "The forms of art are familiar to all, examples are not preserved." "What is that for" when picking up a bit of something. "Who are you! Who hides there! Ah, Seal!" - Mirror image: "The notion that death is an inversion of life is widespread and very ancient." - Shall I try to speak about this weekend's orgy of destruction? The devils were strong in both of us, this morning I seemed to have hardened, or firmed, and when he said "Okay you were nice to me when I was feeble so I'll be nice to you," I liked the way I shouted "Don't you be nice to me! Don't you dare!" Not understanding his cheerfulness: I was painfully hung over, and am still, with sunken eyes: ready to cry again but completely unwilling to. Remember as an oddity how, when he was waking from his headache I imagined for him his next lover, how he would meet her, he added his own little touches and we laughed and were playful. Afterwards he said "Why did you do that ...?" I said for fun, but I was telling him what he really wants, and accurately: I understand him. (I don't think he could tell me.) I was scornful, and I was leaving him to it. I like her too. "And to make fun of your bullshit about not having any replacements." So then he told me, growing more animated than he had been all weekend, about all the "lovely" and "beautiful" girls who've been coming to see him. And then I wanted to know about Arlene: I wanted him to admit his own badness so I wouldn't have to carry it all as I had been, and then when Luke was in bed a great sadness hit me, no recriminations in it; then he was nursey and massaged my head, read me Elegy on a Country Graveyard, I thought of Olivia, he said "I can't read Wordsworth," I said eagerly "Oh I can!" and read the Immortality Ode, and it made me cry and cry, set something loose, and I could tell by the ache in my throat that I needed more crying than that, but Paul seemed an alien creature - he could have got to me then but was somewhere else and by the time we got back he was angry again. I went to bed. He came in with his list of grievances. In that weariness and unresolved poison he wanted to screw - his greedy wiener doesn't care - propped himself up in righteous profile and declared that well in that case he would dissociate himself from the sek-shu-al side of our relationship, and I just thought, in silence and disgust, well so long as it is you saying it perhaps we can both accept it, since if I make it my decision you become all beautiful pathos and I give in. Then I made a plaintive noise about how in this culture if you don't put out there is no intimacy allowed, and it's the only way to get any affection. "That's just your talk" he said. And that was just more blankness, until he apologized; and then my held-in weeping made my face ache so that I couldn't take it and just huddled under blankets in the living room, cold and without a pillow. There's something deeply phony about you, and it is in your affection and kindness, not in your sadness. Yes, and as for me it's true I wanted to be rid of you again and so am able to accept your victorious mood. Also, yes, I've been fond of you. But you poison me with your pretty
sentiments, you poison my possibilities.
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