| dames rocket 8 part 5 - march - april 1978 | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
what's in you baby? devils the cemetery's fine light 'you are a formidable woman!' in a voice I'd never heard because I wasn't impressed with her tragedy closed, it silts in you said, we're losing ground - I was just waking / a horn (ship? factory?) said NEVER - we'll have to do something else - she said this morning I thought it was impossible on the sunday night, I suddenly thought, oh I can't write anymore (I mean the poise and then grab) and I turned flat away I said I was sorry, I was humble and hesitant! because I felt I'd been arrogant / my father's handwriting arriving I don't want to be him so sick cranky blind I don't want to be her flabby starving stoned decision. gabriola, the navigation, a reading unstoned sense. movies. the acrylic fright of fame effort to refind the original voice serving god would be serving love find in the face the effort to be beautiful from my earliest years a life was a story they play etymology xerox for the book I imagined a book with interleaves space truckers (us) erotic travel friend and street encounters the aboriginal and goddesses [between the lines: artemis' wanderer the wild solitary] variations overlaps physics, picture the black images etymological fantasy she the same night dreams she's in a room reading (alone) that she can't get out, she hears (rumblings) sounds that indicate the room is? taking off like a rocket
She regularly had her Sunday puddings from us, but she liked to take them as a miracle.
His Fortune prepared in him an energy [about Bacon] - go to the fisherman's café, the indian waitress is there, cod being put into boxes with a 1-tine fork frozen the men at tables behind and in front of me along the window, mountains coming out of dark it feels that westcoast feel when I woke, shouting outside, pale pink over the roofs the black-towered strange ship, its doors into hollow rises, 'on the radar it looks like a tug and three barges' 'I've never known it to be so I couldn't have a full cup of coffee' he praised her, the only one of her kind the log stops battered ballast tanks fill and they slide them off into the water slowly, over forty, fifty, minutes at the dumping [ground] there's a tunnel the length of it haida monarch crew quarters aft auxiliary at the bow, for turning her the little swollen headed brass nailed fish st francis gardens clean and empty We have moved to 970 Union St daphne says she dreamed a transformation of landscape outside the car, palms. she wdn't say the dream because she hadn't written it yet. she says, I somehow don't think you'll ever call. I fall into a deep blank slightly panicked and find it to climb out, 'but why don't you think ...' and turn it, but I like it, that's her scare she tells me about olga broumas, 'in the sapphic tradition' revise an indulgent goddess piece lonely for j, call her in her sleep, charm and energize her to like me but her voice is still thin and we have a resentful unfit goodbye - the feel of a forgotten dream comes but can't be held unless the picture/reference is found and is that feel the actual message
in a dream I was underwater walking pleasantly clear on the way to sexsmith a dark bank had snatched my loaf of baloney I was looking for the burrow of a creature who had taken it, a whirl of silt when I saw outside the water mild policemen with a message for me from my father saying I must go to the hospital, good, I thought, but the message said the operation was not on my leg but on my sex, an adjustment I imagined to my clitoris there was a long (summons) written description/explanation I can't remember I've had other dreams of sexsmith, one of living in a dark room behind mrs wold crisis about gender we felt we were losing she woke me at dawn to say she was thinking 'you were honest you said both that it was the slide out and that ...' j and I fighting about whether or not she's a man! - [stoned writing]
practicality: the false personality people (is your version winning -) have to find that out what am I doing? 'you know something and I want to learn it' jammi I'm trying to teach you to look between the official voice you subtlize me fictions. that we're I'm revising ourselves that seductions are harmful if I assume emotion is information about wrong something - go toward, go away - emotions belong to the animal - then what is the resistance like, a competition - if I decide soul and body aren't working together for good self absorption / r! / world: it's make it more real, not less - A stone lay there. It was dark like the wall, but on it, or inside it, there was a number; a 5 he thought at first, then took it for 1, then understood what it was - the primal number that was both unity and plurality. That is the cornerstone said a voice of dear familiarity, and Shevek was pierced through with joy. There was no wall in the shadows and he knew that he had come back, that he was home. [Le Guin The dispossessed] birthday 1978. when I see you work I wonder what you're running away from said jam, she herself working quietly and not asking for praise, but bending nails. and she smashed herself. then old paul from next door stands watching our rough work; when jam went inside for something he couldn't resist making a quick mark. we drove the mg to the st joseph's gate, took out two long-handled spades, laid them on the grass next to the tree. I tied a sheet around the base [of the small fir tree] and we bundled the branches up inside it, dug a trench around the base, following each other, stopping, reversing, quickly got to gravel and then it was hard. The other scrounger came to see how we were doing. he looked at me as if he fancied me, gave jam strange looks. j congested froggy. we struggled to wrap the rootball to keep it from falling apart, knots in a sheet, and then I put my shoulder to it, at the base, animal-like, pushed it over, elephant, pushed from the other side, and it brought up as much root as it could. and then we put it on a grey blanket and dragged it. a man with a camera came asking, as if we owned it. we were impertinent and asked him for a hand and I told him how to get in. -
struggling against temptation / to keep / save the soul remake the ideas work, that's to make the world interesting we're trying to rescue each other of mother: she is a little crazy what I want to know about, being beautiful, what happened with roy, what it was really like with m and e in art, the notion of exaltation. or else
words that have the black and white shine: death, birth, dreaming, love, polio device of two people talking who have a language in common but no more I liked to see objects intersecting, roof, wire and bird. - the voices - a thoroughfare for all ideas art objects the writing of a higher. exaltation like sex an informatory pleasure. doubt it isn't doubt I want, it's being uncaught by ideas. learning to see reflections the bespeaking inventing the right world tired/closed - what I didn't write / the depth of my derangement about t and c and my birthday, how hurt by a snub and then closed and can't tell jam everything and then the distance widening and jam making it as if a gender issue - where's your depth, what are you running away from, it's something about men - but no no it's my heart opening to my friends and you don't understand any of that - it's you it's you what are you running away from and did I just choose the wrong obsessed person - 'you're taking the ground out from under me, I've gone as far as I can' - you poke out your port and sulk down your face, drinking is that my mirror during the birthday how she went opaque and so lost - troubled, telling stories about herself in a daze I know, cheryl riding it out patiently, being brave and then the glass landscape I got by looking and waiting for it all day reading I never promised you a rose garden crying in the mall library. when I came out and it was time at last the sun, and he brought onto the counter a larger more wonderful peaked cullet, a wave, a range, foam, writing, grass, two suns or one a moon, cleavages, transparencies, bends, outer surfaces looking like inner structures - I only had time for a dumb pleasure in its multiplicity and clarity, and then his big strong hand held it up and brought the bag down over it and I carried it home to trudy's house on the bus, on my hip, and saw moira looking beautiful, and showed it to her, and set the bag down on trudy's table, and sat down I said, have a look in the bag she said what's in the bag I said water she unwrapped it and we were both thrilled she said it's fantastic what are you going to do with it I'm next to the clouds and gold haze on air and water I say I'm going to give it to you it's mine? she said clearing the place on the radiator for it 'it's you at your finest, but what we have to go through to get to it' 'I know and I'm very grateful' Joanne Greenberg 1964 I never promised you a rose garden Signet [undated letter to my mom] Dear M, first news is that the Canada Council is giving me ten thousand dollars, which means that the film will happen and that you will have your loan back as soon as the first installment comes. I'm sorry to have taken so long. They gave me quite a lot less than I asked for, and I won't have money for playing and spending, but it's enough to begin. Salary at last, for this funny self-employment. You didn't say how you made out with the yoga, did you finish the month? Did you learn anything about what parts of you are bound or free? While your snow lies in its last month of brilliant white, here it has been the powerful tension of hot early spring. On the bright days I'm driven out to the new garden, homesteaded out of the rest of the land next to last year's driveway garden. My body has bashed around with its excess of strength, pounding together a fence out of scrounged materials carried through the streets on my shoulders, and the garden is almost ready-made with rosebushes, a fir tree, another unknown tree (I'll see when the leaves come out), perennial clumps also mysterious, and even sod carried home on a wheelbarrow. I wanted to make a green room but most of all it was my body wanting its own brute strength. Now it rewards me with pink cheeks and aches at night. The garden will have (has) sod benches, like medieval gardens. The fir tree is beautiful and perfect. We took it home in the back of Jam's sports car. Jam, working slowly and carefully, marveled to see my impetuous rush. The old garden is its own creature, seeds planted last year both by me and by last year's plants, are coming up and showing what they are (parsley that took a year to germinate); I feel Grandma K and Grandpa E in their different ways as garden spirits, and in my crude building I think of Father. You sound part of your job; you'll have to make your way into the team, and it will come if your teaching pleases you. Luke's letter to me was also formal and extremely neat. He does like Jake and there'll be a girl baby in the fall if the family can hold together. I miss him but if he's having the family life I'm willing for him to stay in it as long as he can. (Oh Luke! You brilliant soul, I hope you're well.) Grandma K in her wise quiet way seems to have decided that Jam belongs with me. J is fond of her and Opa too. J doesn't wear slippers and I have some, you'll have to find other knittees. When you remember me as a baby I wish you would pursue the memories and get their detail and write them down. Maybe you could use your big journal. Thank you for the birthday money, I bought materials for work. On my birthday my sisters kept me company, J, Cheryl, Trudy, and Daphne. (I'm enclosing Daphne's book and would like you to say how you find it.) It was a hard almost desperate day, tense and hungry, and the next day was an opening, with miracles, weeping, and re-union. The responsibility of this Canada Council money will be a difficult forcing. Good fortune sometimes frightens me. Suzuki says that when you are yourself, you have a destiny and are more loved and more hated. I feel I've begun to have a destiny in that way. The exposure, the price and the joy. No more safety. I've thought of Jesus in connection with this, and wish we had more accurate information, not so long ago and blurred by vested interests. 9 march image of knobs/posts/stumps in semicircles under snow - sensation of clinging to the detail momentary landscapes she lights me up I liked to see your beautiful face again she's reading aloud next door and the voice is fining so it gets an edge a fine wire irony oh the excitement today
sensation of its meaning my name in her handwriting gives me such a happy sense of myself [mary] and as for luke - I'm his landscape [quotes below likely compiled by Joseph Campbell 1959 The masks of God vol 1 Primitive mythology Viking - Nicholas of Cusa 1453 The vision of God , Kena Upanishad, Jung quoting Dorn in Aspects of the masculine]
oh you're back! the way you move, your face story of friends whose bodies continue on but who come and go the stone of the philosophers lies hid veritas an incorrupt medicament in this truth lies the whole art of freeing the spirit further, he must not be hasty or vain health charity goodness patience temperance obedience a spiritual discipline
inflation. the ego thinks of itself too high tendency to giddiness, falling downstairs the knowledge we have of gk and latin the subsumption of the old languages she drew with her hands poison and yet healing draught Imagination is the star in man, the celestial or supercelestial body A stone that has a spirit. Take this, divide it, thrust in your hand and draw out its heart. a rising hope and with it an excitement that was like no other the particularity, when I am in this world, comics, garden, I sometimes have a second of vertigo feeling what is this unlikely tale separation it separates permeability - how to find out what's really going on when we are each other j phones wanting to talk more about r, but not admitting it (spheres of influence) paul comes and is crazed with secret pain and is in it until at the restaurant we have a sparkle and explication and he cries and opens and asks for what he wants and gets it and cries for that and I no longer feel tired but have a fat pink face and come home and find some good poems but can't touch them josie at st joseph's, with a thin strange face saying she's still in minnesota, and moira throwing boards the place has black water from the removed pipes, a stink, broken doorways, it's gone paul was disturbed and I took him to the new home of the old men to show him their ceramic lamps - each of us dreams, saturday night I, that I'm in bed with tony, saturday night fever man, my mother keeps pushing open the door, we pull a carpet (mine) over us in a corridor near the staff washroom (where I contemplated edith's betrayal) I think ashamed that I have somehow got myself committed to marriages (planned future) with two different people and wonder if I can tell jam then I'm in an elevator with some people, it stops between floors, pink carpet, the elevator manager's neat little (chinese?) children pile ropes for the correction of our position (we're going up? or down, I can't remember) she dreams she and I are sitting at the table where we eat breakfast, the woman from downstairs (stewardess, she's away right now, has been for some time, 'she had a new TR3, a spitfire, that was front-ended and that little car had to be put into the rack to have its frame straightened, you don't know about these things! my mg is the only one in the province that's never been front-ended.' that impressed me very much) came in boldly and asked you to take a picture of her lips and one breast, she took them off, you were concerned that the breast would wobble but she wanted to hang it cup-shaped on a hook in the air. she tried to locate the hook and couldn't. 'she came in and made me this offer, I didn't really want it but it interested me somewhat.' - a headache near you one kiss paralyzed me and then anna so stunning and openfaced and I was bold with her and told her those people are mediocre and that you pretend you don't have any tits and that she shouldn't have to decorate herself for people she doesn't really want to move. she moved the quilt and sat by me on the bed. etymologies. I wanted to tell you my thoughts and you wanted to go to bed but by then yr body had disappeared and anyway you use it as distraction that sweet contact blamed me cos I came to be forgiven too fast and you lost sleep and cancelled lectures blamed me cos only my friends could give me a birthday familiarity breeds hiddenness talking about responsibility for power. you want to know your responsibility and whether you're free there are somethings I want to talk to her about little j arrives squiring a stunning woman who gives herself, in flattery, to the one she's with yes, breakfast a building, new built, teachers or wardens live there, the rooms are all taken but I'm told one may be temporarily free for me I look in and see various states of inhabiting one seems to have a happy family, a big bed with some structure like a cat's cradle on it, the child's bed beyond it I'm petitioned by a man with a camera, he wants me to help him thread the film on something like a plastic curler, we read and reread the instructions and cannot make it work. it's jam, I ask her whether the problem was a set-up, she nods, it was a false problem that she entrapped me with the curler had a plastic spike, 3", that the film should be threaded onto your man is self parody fiction to prevent you taking yourself seriously the night of tension, missing luke, hearing from roy, when I wouldn't be with j, next day the letter from cc [canada council], shaking hand, with daphne, disappearing, with t and c laughter and pleasure kirk [tougas] said we will make our way through this labyrinth somehow j says she's scared of the camera with black and white film because it's a converter, I say be careful she says, maybe it's about your friends, it just came to me. I say yes that's it. she's light and tight, she says the black and white world letter from paul about pride rebellion the new paul digging up tiny bottles at tree roots, he says may I ask your name, then he says do you live with your friend? his dim hunger, is it mother nature telling him to put a child into me and is mother nature speaking thus to his body through mine and who is responsible for this? I realized I was looking forward to refusing him. that, like the inflated one speaking in me (wain: the censor - censere to declare formally, to describe officially, to tax) [stoned hand writing]
we are the sort of person we don't want to be married there's something I have to find oh doris what is it piety about opening take it and run resisting the entrapment and those outside it your reality each other's black magicians 18 march I smoked, was in the bathtub, thinking about how we are, the crisis, what it means, she arrived (as on acid) as if an apparition, saying stay away, the key, give me the key. I was not in good balance and could only dimly reply. I should have given it to her but instead gave her what I thought she wanted, refusing her the drunkenness and desperation in the letter, demanding that I be her woman is that me? now it's combat oh subtle one
what did you say in sandy's voice. I guess that will have to do - the look on t's face when she was memorizing a frame c lost in deciding whether to be important where she wasn't in the conversation, how when I think something wise is being said, sometimes the opposite, a stoned confusion maintaining illusions you are also liking to have me weak, in this personal hysteria surrender or not a stability through different ones story of a phantom friend who comes taking a distance from the talk, keeping a separate world replying to the underspeech the story of drug and she inflect a friendship with - - c's idea of the earth's age, I said it will look after itself, she said, but it's middle aged and as you get older you lose things I have a small joy in me since the grant, which says the world can exist again, solid, and not my dream science, real astronomy, real airplane sinking on the horizon, real intersections of real and dream but the fight, and the call of dissolution dreamed I was on the way to iceland with a pathetic dumpy woman I was bound to marry (wanted to marry me), I dumped her, she crying. in iceland I wanted to see dinesen's place, only the harbour visible, the hills covered with fog. a professor (absent) whose small old house I stayed in with other people (we sang) I looked in the bookshelves for a particular book I didn't find brick and board like student days loveless and trying to find strength away from the fright and superstition of the winter and my undoing with 'my friends' feeling how stupid I am j saying the painful last month without connection has been fruitful for her and she's looser in her work, which no longer interests me because of its abstraction and yet
j saying she's ten years ago alone as before sandy excited and hot I have no dark soul with forms and intimations closed up shop use will, make new forms think out of the enslavements freedom incest robbery badness crippling and learning to walk again - dreamed a train I waited until the last moment to buy tickets, only first class left, I burst into tears and say but I have two children (anne's) he reaches for the ticket book. just then a man goes through the streets high in the air tow rope I run out to look and see him come down turn back to the ticket office he's not there any more why don't I just go first class then? retreat from the difficulty and silence of my real intelligence and eroticism I certainly went too far on that path, and perhaps farther than I was capable of, soon seeing myself forced into the motions of a mad person, being tired, provoked, ending up by being beaten without having succeeded in providing a meaning for myself. I love peace, I feel relaxed when I feel transparent, much more than when I feel masked, attracting looks, suspicion, perhaps even hostility. This is what makes me write and in the particular style I have adopted. I am happy when I attain something that seems clear and lucid to me. But who can tell me that when the book is finished I will not once again fall into a kind of penumbra, becoming more dense, heavier, intolerable even? That is when the need to write might return. And then sometimes I am tortured by the good fortune of being as light as in daylight, afraid of losing myself in it. How can we find out what these alternations mean? I opted for communication, for clarity, impersonality, because I see the necessity of it and because solitude frightens me. all the cunning that the will to power uses to attain its ends Contradiction is no more: only the violence of egotism an act of will using language, which furnishes knowledge with its elements [Who is this? It sounds French, like Artaud or de Chardin.] a creature in the air, snowy owl, heavy fluff, I'm with one other on the ground, there's one in the water, a beautiful strange thing with whorls on its head (swiss chard seed) we are looking at the one in the water with sympathy, the one in the air plunges down and grabs the water one by the neck, bites, shakes, tries to cut through the neck, drops it on the ground, is in the air heavy with water, the one on the ground makes a note to us in water that turns rainbow colored, he ends it with a dashed line toward the underbrush, and dashes in its direction when the snowy owl creature comes again. we are sympathetic to both. this happens at the creek. we go home to a place where diana, rhoda, lived and I am excited wanting to write the story of my times/connection with cheryl and the creatures are part of it. there are people around making chat, a critic bragging that susan sontag gave him a big book inscribed by ----. I seem to live somewhere in these dreams. a man who lives there is thinking to make a program, he skates, there's a fire, the water will be used for things and mustn't be drunk cheryl phones saying she may have to go into hiding because rhoda has taken up a friend of don's, tim; she tells me where she may be. a street she pronounces as if french, an english word, near broadway, on the boulevard that goes out to montreal, I don't get the number right it's 3660 on something but I can't get it right and hang up before I do the little boy has been lost, I find him, after a month, among the soldiers, the warfare just starting but the little girl (his wellington boots may have kept him dry, I feel cold but dry wellingtons on my own feet) is still lost the feathered creature, caliban, force, flight, plunge, human, forced; the water creature, submerged, helpless (but I think also bites the neck of the feathered one), coiled like a shell on the head, the writing, the quick rainbow sign, is to ask us to follow my mother says it's nice to caress the baby under the arms, the baby is on the jar, and in my hands, there's a rowboat with a rope and something at the other end. I have the rope twisted around my foot, the tide goes out so fast the boat in its plunge down the bank is going to take us with it, I shout mary! and stop the dream. - I have a blank withheld and want it to stop but want it to go on and say part of me doesn't let go; later it does, I kiss her head right back onto her shoulder and that makes me imagine going into her and through her / when I get my true rhythm / big hands on her arms / face into the scarf with its smell of another place / it's as if I overwhelm her, big tide; later I just hold onto her, she's got a shake of her own, like crying. it's pebbles, it's beach; her long legs to my zipper and the touching pulls at belt loops mostly I feel why couldn't I have it when I loved all through and every gesture had such a pressure behind it, these gestures are often false, except the leaning. leaves me this morning with the mushy feel of uncomplete lovering, an old time. before that, long slow time sitting across the table, measured conversation and not new, and the times in between the nook, we both know we want to say goodbye so we can and what's that, it's the inclination, seeds, sheep, transformations, herd empty, empty, hmm, hmm, ooo laugh 3 joints, by herself, where did it send her, I had no idea, I was determined to stay in me, but opening my eyes after the noses (cold breath, hot she says, but that's the forehead) I saw such a pointed starred face, if it's sorcery (and that's what I seem to watch for) she's taking chances and I collect it into that, I had steadiness a constant stream into her, and undiminished, the forehead that makes the face another, she was robert louis stevenson, she was the peaked point-eyed one, so tamed so putting her head on my shoulder and I on hers - "Duchamp and Leonardo both said art is not for the senses, it's for the intellect." - the open time. tell everyone about my official promotion [filmmaking grant], watching it warp me. whether to be more arrogant, yes, and spending time in bored exchange with people: don't really want to know about my price for their reflection of the promotion, it would be noble to say nothing and all day I couldn't. travel agent, choy and paul. "really on top of it today, aren't you." a dizziness wavered the world, I thought to cure it with corned beef, delicious food, the war memorial park diagonal eating it - art library, watching a woman in bored metaphysical conversation with a thin pious man, the tall woman, scarf wrapped head and foolish earrings, the dignity of her height and big eyes, a low voice. I was angry when she came in and I had to decide whether to hide (yes, because I was ashamed). on the way home the sidewalk movie long shadows high grain beautiful greys, stone next to concrete a second shadow appearing at a wing angle to the primary, two legs, other legs, flashes, goes into a uniform dark, the unbelonging colored peeper and cigarettes, landscape, frames, chasms. shadow says don't look here. once a shadow poured from a shadow hose. the actions of a flat thing oblique watching again, the beauty of texture and scape. human things on the side and above. daphne in her winter coat bent over oppressed home from work. holding down my pockets I run to get to her garden just as she does and I see her alone looking at her soil. she parts with some plants, the bamboo rhubarb so sincere and the rhubarb, cowled. and brown green chicory. and wine and she gets pink cheeked and bold-eyed. I say boo. you too she says. how polite she knows how. nice supper. I liked it best telling her mole molle and the mols including meal. roy with his hair down listening to the story of the hospital / the moment their conversation interested them more than I did. her hair when I saw it from above spins whiter/browner in such a depth of varied lines. what to work on, everything now is free play. the secret crimes of consciousness. By conscience.
- The first exercise is with the mind - allowing the possibility of finding a small rock without conscious seeking, aimless wandering, purposeless - with faith. The rock finds the searcher - a foundation stone. A careful colour study is made - the subtle nuance of hue, value, density - colour mixed to match. The rock is meditated upon intensely - definition must dissolve in the merging of the subject-object - 'rockness' must be experienced beyond definition - beyond size - beyond verbal grasp. The rock must be entered, wandered in - again without purpose - one must scale cliffs, abide in grottos, slide down crystalline facets of direct perception - one must pierce the rock until it becomes everything. A gentle withdrawal - the rock is just a rock. With a small brush one mixes a slightly darker value than the shadows, a slightly higher one for the relief - then commences painting on the stone its own colours - carving with the dark pathways already existent - tracing ravines, joining crevasses, dissecting with surgical precision the topology - never imposing - always teasing out inherent structure - emphasizing the already existing! Jack Wise "Painting from Nature Analysis" 1977 [This was typed and torn off a sheet, stuck between pages.] - [stoned handwriting] cheryl I'm going to know you until I die and that won't be - no, I won't look at that although I think that if I did look at it I would know.
the pain I had on your account. what I have to learn with cheryl and trudy is how to speak from the front of me. cheryl is going to be my best friend my mirror my language friend. can he go there with me? I'll find out what's his favorite mind. he how soon. hey how soon. I have to remember the cost. I have to remember. but in fact I'm getting ready. there isn't much in me that's not ready and in someway yes I was always ready. and it will take me to such a depth in me. and those two will be safe with each other. and we'll know how to court slowly. and olivia will understand because we help her to, or maybe not. and because we are with each other. no I never imagined being a couple with either of them. they are going to be my deep friends. what is he going to do with his life. he knows. - to daphne. pale green, her witch is a different sort, scarf on her head, she was planting and didn't hear me, I was consciously charming sending a pour into her, that was from coming from jam. Her acuteness refound and mine refound in hers. (the sharing [she's been thinking about me] I thought, looking at the ice making machine finding my concentration better because of her) and with it a sadness underneath (something is wrong - what? it says) earlier. I resist garbage talk, it's fellow humans j can grasp me but I can't, her; best love making at the back of the knee in it I'm telling myself the marvel: I don't have to be different than I am and yet, forcing a play, to confess myself. to her nipples, you're dead, you don't go up and you don't go down (you don't have an elevator), you're stones. but they were opening and closing and breathing, having a warp, like the gender one 'you're exquisite when you don't make noises' and in fact quite still, but attending to my own (oh, I thought, yes, finding the other in yourself) 'I started to know you quite well some time ago,' in confident voice that impressed me and then not long after we found our (my)self playing - world, are you still there t this time, asking her for information about what it is that is drawing lovely people, she said it's an innocence in a woman's body. maggie's heft and lurk. she said when she'd been with jam she felt she'd been as if with a man. when she was confessing herself and simultaneously building her enticement, she got a face that was nearly not hers, a stricken long face, boy; her laughing at herself, that makes her less of a phantom than maggie's leaning on importance. I saw a face on me, too, that scared me by its neutrality, on this road I won't be pretty. leaning against her was easy, warm soft and the body trusted, I didn't hold its pleasure down, and wasn't afraid of it taking me; allowed the kiss, that bold/timid swivel, yes, and then (it's that j is strong enough now?) sex come to test me and if I manage it, it adds its powers to those of my worldly person in underthought it's sex, food, books, laughter, success: and what to distract me from? (driving in the country, looking at fantastic houses) 'before this, I felt that if I didn't change something in me, I would die' t j saying she's laughing these days - taking on the souls of every lover - 'there's something I have to tell you' j's voice as I was waking, and I am frightened. the wheel barrow with young hay - pushing it across pender thinking about god and devil being the stream, the all of it, how working today I sometimes could remember to watch the motions themselves and how they used or tired the body, and that attention and truth are the angels that bring 'me' into presence - cheryl saying what she hadn't said, that she was ashamed we could not be a community for rhoda [when she had an abortion] and she couldn't offer (out of pride, but she didn't say that) - 'her body wanted it,' grabbing it out of unlikeliness - it was given - trudy crazy, and everybody lying and even in my happiness with the garden and the little erotic freedoms and flirtations, I have self congratulation and piety no. again: every day I am thinking what is this? telling daphne the slippage is god daphne's grant, t, c, 'e' and rhoda come before, and j at home; t's a little crazy, using me in it. j getting out of bed to test an intuition, I fell asleep while she worked and when I woke once more left my body in her hands (but it isn't right to) because I had nothing better to do, but wishing I cd love her and then opening my eyes and seeing the face I love, and 'it' sends me on and away, she can't keep me, I can't keep her, meantime she fed on my body and it did her good, and my sadness was anger that she won't be in her body for me. and I can't say what that means, maybe that I can't be in mine for her: the flow is only one way - I can't find my body in hers. trudy finding herself marilyn monroe in mine, and it loved the easy flow. 7 april when t said on the phone that she's been wearing black in the four and a half years since she has been with cheryl, and she has the friendship back now, I felt a release in my abdomen, expansion, warm. something true, and then t again in a baby voice saying she loves me, like a high school boy wanting a make, the whole play of (revision) balance on her madness and sanity; with j I've been won out, confessing fear of vampires (at this point the sensation of unreality); she says try an image from our own time; beautiful play, the archer; the scare of rhoda when a joint was lit, I'm going to be killed now (r saying to t that they were murdering me and she couldn't stand to see it, another joy of confirmation), j lies down, r lies down and an apprehension in me, j sits up; r goes home. we have to work out our version, she wants to be close and we are but I'm contact stoned and tell her past times with music, the country twilight summer evening service, straining to examine the music in that childhood, I wake up having dreamed a woman speaking behind my back of my lameness. j holding me says you want to tell me something, you want to tell me your dream.
le mépris. I told her it was her vanity that makes her civil - her sadness end of teaching when I needed to kiss her toes and closed the door with the wrong sound cloud of unknowing technology I'm still doing nothing, empty, feeling a little pleasure of return and skillful method the press gang party smiling among the dancers, gently or briskly everyone jogging and bumping, I had my true love to be with, even to dance with, front to front or back to front, and the red shirt making me light josie in wine red, moira in salmon pink, diana roses on account of arrow-eyed sandy who usually knew where i/j was too, the socialist band and two plain bold women singers little j couldn't take off her plaid jacket, I was lightboned with happiness to be there with her and be able to dance with her after completion don't pause to admire yourself especially because she could after all dance I couldn't look too close or hard, only could see precision sleek sleek and home and my away, and how it changed when she touched patiently without willfulness, and the icy skin of acute love her silence, how we went on until sleep, getting it right, descent taking time, where to take the attention and it becoming meditation, slighter and slighter I stay still and don't make false love, as I used to, and am learning what it is now the waking comes from further and then doesn't go away when she was cross, I said I would sometimes read to her and she was better already in the morning when I'd told the dream of sandy in a canoe being held upright by the pole between it and the water, so precarious they couldn't steer but only drift to shore mirror surface between us and the shore's only implied, I'm in the canoe alone you tell the dream where, packing up an old house you find a note in your old handwriting that says sandy my darling, I love you so much alas! alas when you tell it there's a shock like plunging our configuration under water, she's in a chair, I in another, the open window, sun, (almonds on the table, hazelnuts, cup) table out of it I quickly tell your journals and you say you were biding your good time and I was too and we both know I'm forgiven as you were because of curiosity do I make her myself when she's bareface on the pillow lying down to speak, and someone else? april 12 life has begun again; at the piano imagining how to work through every stop, peace and plenty attention to detail and no limits, so much to learn, so far to travel but I didn't do the party right, lonely robin embarrassing, maggie with a pleasant word for every soul, marilyn a solid good health, measuring her words, crossing the river flats, talking to god in times of trouble; mostly j ritter being hard, and in her fine clothes and busy talk successfully sending us away from the hard stare of her cold soul, but leaning on patrice in confidence dispersal, and she's in glossy health too. marilyn is still one in and out, I looked at her seeing her and my maturity j ritter's upper lip says something - ? a sex greed? and slavery? too many doors, ritter said wind shakes the house squatting on the green floor, on a shaking. I think of the house shaken from the basement up, reading a spaceship, fine particled hum of machine, irregular knocks and bit whistles, penetrate my diaphragm when I pay attention I wanted to write bravely: I exist differently, I have made a jump, if I am brave and careful I will know and see father refusing me something, I'm protesting, I didn't come here to work for you, I'm here on work of my own - being sent away to the constructions on the old farm, billy kinderwater, the whole family, they're kinder, but I don't have a place there either, they tuck in for the night, I haven't found a bed yet, and this morning I'm asleep heavy seems a place I was before c had been reading mennonites in western canada then music, concentrating on what makes the mistakes, then the bach prelude, then jam, then trudy, then cheryl, then daphne, and most with d, and c's body contracted, her face growing, I could touch her but she didn't like me talking after she smoked I said I feel there's a vortex and I'm resisting it because I want to know more about it d anxious about nuclear, I about inner takeover d saying ordinary people look clear and beautiful. her sister's christening, and as if it's poised over an abyss; also passivity in lovemaking
- I am fucked by someone when I fuck myself, the blimp organ comes in, I say please please on the home road, turning in at kinderwater's house, silence, that's all I know about it, windows on the side of the house, one of the windows open, stirring inside, (I think of reactivating the early time)(does it give away substance?) I am on the road, walking, at night, many cars, dangerous, traffic like the road never has, (dreams, heavy traffic, dangerous) I am somewhere? I don't know where, and then hitchhike (crossroad) with a car full of young people, they are going toward wembley, am I going to hythe? no to la glace, you could let me off at the highway, it's nearby, two disconnected lanes we cross to turn around, the red car goes down an embankment, covered with trees, brown grass (echoes another dream) then snow, plows up through snow we've gone down and come up again, we drive between the trees, I see the red hydrant she's heading for and stop her going into it (it feels like - somewhere - I can't get it) we come to the top and see the two highways, they let me off near a building, I go into it and see a swimming pool far below, I wonder whether it has receded, I hear cheryl's voice and go into the cafeteria smiling, tell them the story (the dream) of how I came to them in this unlikely place (the red car) jail cells with plots of ground for gardens inside dreams of not having finished school, of not having left home, arriving at the farm where we'll work after school for our board, working out how it will be, I see grandma out the door of the barn loft made of sunset clouds, I tell her about how she looked, we love each other, paul getting an offer to join a commune a young man writing a bad poem and being changed for it, from fat bushy haired to lean and fashionable a reward from joan baez the last dream was still at our farm (we had the arrangement, for our board, we'd work after school) what does this mean? we had a fish I flayed it and ate parts of it, trying to wrap it in newspaper, no you can't take it home, it will smell in the truck read parts of the magazines, swimming pools seen from underneath [sketches] the relation of abstract questions to the real life actions and choices morality: roy, immorality getting out of jail staying out of jail intelligence the house made by the teachings of those more timid than I (and he) wild life, good health of the impulses her obedience she says - 'I found ...' 'I worked out what ...' - we spent time again without concentration blabbing can we only be together when I've been to my other friends to be deepened and focused? I touch her mistakenly and don't trust that I don't want to [Jam has a goodbye meal with her students in a restaurant] mary the flaming witch, pretending to be social I saw her horns when she said capricorn fascinated they love jamila, all the women sit so far forward I wanted to break it, authority and not having it. being embarrassed to say what I was and yet wanting to and so doing it badly rather than honestly I wasn't watching to know who she is, in false security dim and lying in all, and so I was disappointed was that envy and possessiveness again I lean close and say I can't take my eyes off mary. she doesn't like it and doesn't say I keep talking about mary pomp pomp pomp pom I said, competing t, t, t, t wifely, competing (what sandy does and is) in all that evening I did feel odd and the consort the self discomforts and joys and that I resented alan when I found out he was rich that other people will know what I don't in my unfound egotism very looking and not seeing brian born in ireland and marrying brian! brian saw more than I did 'if you don't take the green one I'll be disappointed' [I know your automatism] not wanting to take the cheesecake from him (but wanting the cheesecake) I was willing to let him know 'his' wife fascinated me and he turned me into a woman but it didn't stop me, and the liking was because an engagement had happened mary talking about maggie tulliver and hardy's women, (j doesn't speak to what's being told her) was she speaking indirectly to me. knowing what interests me in any situation and applying myself to letting the curiosity and meanness out (nothing to lose) 26 times. performing for avis and at us at the centre of the table I ask mary wd you make it with a goat's body? she says it's the face (peter o'toole, her mirror, but the sad wise) - about saggitarious - she was saying she's unsatisfied with her marriage (he called her porcelain) I said there's a woman behind us (him) who I'm harassing her (she how bold I am). then he made up the restaurants for different times (see how imaginative I am). then he named me (that turned it). I asked to know what else he sees. a mirror of the watching. 'oh never arrogant, you're too sensitive' (flattering both of us) I disagree but don't know how to give up the flatter - I say oh shit and am stopped (he's saying, I know you, you're no man, you're a lovely woman) and I fall for it and after that am a lovely woman but am still looking at his wife, and talk about her (to her) as if she's not there. (he does it to keep me off) worchester 300 years old, I wd have said irish, yes, that's there, the celtic, she doesn't look at me they get up and leave I'm looking at the bodies he's looking at me (shielding his wife with his eyes, but also I look good and know it and that confuses it) - letting me know he is but I'm shameless (until he shames me), she's bigger and rounder in her body than I thought, and she pads it with black. 'don't you ever stop looking?' and after that it's the revenge with the green mint when he offers j a bite with an ugly smile. when he offers me one and I take it because I want it (as with the green mint) (that's how we get to know each other) even though I know what he's doing when he gets up he's bigger, does he get up to show how big he is (wrote he and it looks like lie) the woman at the next table, cowface, beautiful and a piece, decorating the table. I stare to see if I can shame her I was impersonating a bold one the tyranny of speaking to be understood (goodness) in the social times being kept out of knowing by shame the voice on the tapes of dreams, you speak to yourself pompously - another word, colonially, with some good inventions - uncharmingly - stiffly and academically what do you think about this voice? (submersion, keeping the surface busy, can't get to deep)
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