| edged out 1 part 1 - 1981 july-august | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
July 18 1981 Vancouver "We tell each other." "My Chinese friend" said my Chinese friend. "Like a dying man I'm seeing flashes from our time," crying beside my ear. Mei-lin. Some removed, but being thrilled that our leaving had coincided. "It is the same as my Chinese given name." "I think I can see in her face the different people she's been with." Pleasure that she'll open where I couldn't know her. "I guess I made a decision." Clamouring in gladness of doing it right. But there's revenge and protection in it, I'm smart to have found a way so this doesn't hurt me, oh what a good thing I don't have to feel that. We walked through the big leaves to a new place. Didn't see, there was the transaction and then love. I sound happy when I talk about him and want the fantasy free and can't know I'll ever - Whether feeling is real or not, is the urgency. Already he's gone through to her. She's looking for Blake and read my Rilke. It was the Four Zoas she wanted. Blue beads.
July 19 We were interestedly speaking but the way her voice was stiff with fear reading the story and she looked up strangely over it. Do I want to work at understanding that. No.
Interior ritually cleaned by taking out householding stuff. The post of the world Will, concentration and assertion: commands to x, deliver commands in the spirit Making a way through the appalling in the unconscious - is what Seer traveler singer and curer When he sees he usually travels "We crossed paths at the airport. She started to cry and excused herself." [I take a minimum wage job as an attendent at Hastings Steam Bath which is around the corner from my house on Pender St] At the steam bath several times a slight waver, is it me I'm in, and going home through the streets, is this my place? Alleged. (Bush and Valhalla weren't unreal.) - 9 nights
- Realizing the existences of animals. I'm thrilled realizing I've felt their existences. They're all around the barn, including birds. I could make a film about animals sleeping! That could be my work. I'm in a state of excited vision feeling the implications of what I just saw. There's a stir beyond the calf pen I'm in, a large animal has stepped out of a stall, a horse I think, but I know it's the bull. He'll come for me. There's a gate I can hold over the door from inside, it will be only my weight holding him. I do hold the gate when he comes but only for a second. I just lay it open and stand beside it. I'm going to face a real contest, I may die, I'm thrilled. He grasps my left wrist. I see only his big wrist. Then he grasps my right. I'm going to be led out of the stall and it seems to me, laid down. I wake in the dark. I'm sorry I woke, I wanted to be able to go through it. My womb is thrilled but I'm not wet. I realize after a while, when I've been considering the dream, that my body's very hot under the quilt. - She is drinking at night excited at work lower face swelled to a fish. I'm aware of holding the indifference but know I didn't decide to hold it: watch her try for me with what would have hurt me, and actually float away somewhere else. Indignant swelled pain: it doesn't touch me. But I don't tell the story of fasting 30 days when he was 17 because I don't believe it. "It's under the sign of Orpheus." Last night imagining, 'having a sense of' the steam bath and its figures as mythology, acid like. I'm in the barn for the night. It's dim and not cold. The remembered barn I think this one is, I see in a brown light. My view of this barn is wide, from slightly above my eye level. Animals are sleeping all around. I'm in the barn for the night. The door shut behind me faces north. I'm just right of it looking into a deep dim space. I have a sense of the complete rectangle, animals are sleeping in every part. Looking for a match, a small box on the surface of a cook stove in the calf pen. I'm thrilled in comprehension. I've realized, I've felt, the existences of these sleeping animals! That could be my work. There's a stir from the stalls beyond the calf pen along the south wall. A large animal has stepped out of its stall into the centre of the floor. I can only see a large dark body. I think, a horse, but I know it's the bull. There is a gate I can hold across the door of the calf pen from inside, but it will be only my weight against the bull. I am holding up the gate and the bull is standing on the other side of it, without pressing, but suddenly I set it down. I'm in a thrill of fear and excitement, I'm realizing what I've done, I'm going to accept life and death combat. It's likely I'll die. He has grasped my left wrist. I can see only his large right wrist. He grasps my right. I am going to be led out of the calf pen and it seems to me, laid down. I wake in the dark disappointed I didn't go through with it. My belly is thrilled. I realize after a while that I'm giving off a lot of heat. - White shirt jeans bare feet brown arms movement in the house. I like the colors of your clothes and skin and hair and care not for anything you have to say. I kissed the tongue he wanted to bury. But should I see what occurs: I hold the seal and don't struggle in the exchange, waiting for it to stop. Sometimes I'm so hungry to see myself: was it. orphos orthos dionys dionysus orthos through passages dark and steep, in silence
A kid I am fallen in milk. - the pair of rocks, which open and close
Helena was dendrites - a fertility goddess a ride on a black horse July 24 Fracas in the bank. "I'm not going to give it back. I have to have it." The hundred dollars and spoiled check. They shooed me out. These last days repeated stops about money. Then at the library 4 books, 10 dollars owing on them. The girl said "Today's the 24th." I said hem, pointed to 24 JUN. She said "Today's the 24th, go 'way." Thank you! I had only twenty until ? That was after getting film back on Robson, sitting on the sidewalk, downtown full of naked people, in white shirt blue beads, looking into boxes of slides from Valhalla. They're dead. From Slave Lake and that one from Edson. They're full of colors instinctively framed, brilliant and have my loves in them. Robert's face again. Graham, Bunny, Jabez, Jean, Gene. Wanting to show Robert to J: isn't he beautiful do you see what I mean. Kathleen Raine's story of taking a vision as a sign and then refusing after that to see anything, because what she wanted most was the value of magic vision. After quite a long time I remembered myself wailing with Roy because his betrayals were making the initial miracle untrue. Waiting to find out why I have this time easily left J. Wondering what dreadful regret I might be in for and yet it's firm. 25 July We go to SF to see Sheila. The placenta; dendrites; the experiences of protodeath being what must be memories of being born - if that's so it leaves actual death open which is what I'd like. And if the powerful symbols have to do with memory, that also leaves it clear in front. emblematic visionary events, mathematical symmetries, clairvoyance, metamorphoses, biological racial recall Stevens myth of imagination has more openings out based on a few simple magical formulas intuited the ancient power of fright or lust October was the season of the Bassarids of Dionysus New, white of birth and growth; full, red of love and battle; black, old, death and divination. the immaculate / Cauldron, talking and crackling
Concentrate on something for a while, give it to a speaker, put it away until - Mind keep moving An art that could be received only in vision To open the worlds! The nets of female religion, allied to death images Mutual in one another's love and wrath all renewing
Its finest breathings The physical melting of the will Her attractiveness has crept into his limbs - her fright also: he may not
Ceridwen cauldron of inspiration, keeper Love deep rose, orange, green
That its desire and its organization run counter Casting a circle
I am in a state to perceive them when I am close to the death of the body. Symbolic action A love rite with her representative after taking a cauldron bath Miria the wonderful [undated letter - appears here but don't know when it's from] On the slope I was telling you - now it's evening - I don't think it's possible to write - somebody woke us at 4 - I'd been awake 'til 2 - on the mountain before 6, it looked like bright sky above the mist - but it rained - wrong boots, soaked - crossing through swamp foot slipping in - tired, stumbling, falling over - right foot aching with cold - they're all planting better, I fall behind and can't see their treeline, look around bewildered - right foot aching in the cold - all day - protecting injured right elbow and left shin makes it twice as slow crawling over logs - not carrying many trees but they overbalance me backwards - it is 10 AM and we're supposed to work 'til 6, I want to stop now - huddle under the tarp cold all over hands and feet wrists sting - like that all day - swamp - burnt logs - rains more - rains less - colder warmer - can find the line, easier - harder - huddle in the truck - feet sting - what you can't imagine is knowing it will be 6 hours before you can go home and get warm, stop struggling over branches - and back home not one friend who isn't an enemy - no thoughts observations nothing new some memory - you struggling at Fox Creek not looking like struggling and not seeming to mind being the hopeless planter - I do mind - hate the stumbling and awkward crossings over logs - hate myself stumbling - voice answering is not mine - it's mine but wrong - sometimes in desperation something said makes me suddenly laugh more than I understand - they're all like that saying anything and the other laughs - unbearable - miss the old companions though it was always like this The male principle is first seen as a nearly androgynous figure, the child, the flute-playing blue god of love Connected with High Self
in summer, when light is longest, they meet as crone she is the dark face which demands death and sacrifice
Oral teaching of the Faery tradition It generates a rath form, an energy swirl Powerful is to draw energy into the group Power must be grounded every time it is raised
To send out energy The energy of the raith, Younger Self To the central cauldron Lady of the outer darkness, black bull of midnight, north star, stone, fertile field [these are Starhawk The spiral dance] The person waiting in front of me at the Murchies window - look down the street - Gene in shining skin - green vest threaded gold. a straight line intersecting a given curve certain functions of an angle or arc Second sound a vibratory motion resembling that of sound waves associated with a superfluid What a superfluid, from being cooled to within a degree of absolute zero, can do: exceptional heat conductivity, ready permeation of very dense substances, and the ability to flow upward against gravity. It's a fluid that wouldn't solidify, can creep between molecules, pass on changed, vibrate without holding it and flow up. It's almost nothing but a fluid sectile smoothly
sweet processor so strong or well-made as to render loss, escape or failure unlikely
the type of placenta or manner of its structure
the weird, or rival, tall, lean, darkfaced
the distant barking of dogs placed himself in a region where nothing mattered but - Flying on an air mattress. I'm hanging on too far on the right edge. If I grab it perilously pull over. Get onto the centre. Can direct it where I want down low over white water above a falls or maelstrom. It seemed I was flying behind her. At a counter of a laundry? I see it's him next to me. Dirty red shirt, unshaven. Speak easily to invite him to visit. "If it wasn't for how my body is, being a woman would be no problem to me at all."
[to do list getting ready for Luke]
- Best contact from a negative, less with prints.
with the idea of getting an image or density upon it They didn't see what they'd never seen before then at the bright shadow Shut off the sense of vibration I lay on the couch testing the vibrations Again came the turning in air, the dive into the tunnel the B personality I recognized as belonging to my body from what source I do not know, but which I found myself calling my mentor great interpreters assume the complexes He must have the ability of doubling These mental controls constitute an art private to each
terpenes juniper the archangel of the abyss whose name in Greek is Appollyon prophetic the close linkage between the memory function and the essence of mind 'without support'
Suddenly she was viewing the damage from the inside, coming to understand it, then stimulating healing. I couldn't find words to describe how she did it. I could see. I could understand. I could even show someone else mentally. I began wondering if I could do it. My image of her shrank in proportion to the amount of strength I took other latents to transition by reading them 16 August Luke came. On the bus, Victoria to Marine Drive, Midway Connector. The heat at the bus stop. New red shoes. The red canvas strap shoes. Red across the lines of fine toe tendons. Sitting on the rail, crowd pressed up near it extending into most of the room, the children peering between the doors in their sun clothes, crowds in costume, Sunday afternoon festival bodies and clothes. Everyone coming through the door into the focus. He came in his striped colored teeshirt, I jumped off the rail, skipped, leapt, lifted him off the ground. Did the steward say My handing over the flight bag. We sat on the sidewalk against the airport city wall looking across to town, haze, waiting for the bus. Riding in. 19
[began here] Anne's box, green clothes, windbreaker, pants with small waists, she's going to make a speech, dressed wildly compared to my green kneesocks and pumps, it's someone else with her name, a vast skating rink beside the corridor. She sees a pair skating, she skates in the corridor, strides and little exercises, the pair at the edge of the rink almost flat [sketch]. A coach stops, two babies get out run to the ice, run back around for a kiss. We'd gone from the lecture room for kleenex I'd offered to find her to a women's meeting when I'd first arrived in London. Tears had made welts grow up in their track one on each side eye to chin. I was dressed wrong in a very short dress. Something that happened when I first come to London. School exercise, ranks of children meant to chorus out what they read, they read it wrong, a boy puts hand on shoulders of boys next to him, leaps up and swings, the high school boys are finding it brilliant, somewhere in the far corner there's disorder. Luke: I thought it was glorious when - - September 1 Cheryl's [birthday party] - rises from a straight chair in the corner - the tall girl with straight brows, wearing a shirt that when she was turned toward the light showed her breasts. She strode, sat on the chair, pushed her hair straight back eager and coltish. In the early party, hash, happy in seeing how they all were and having my own thoughts too, thinking that was the two souls, socially contented, but cold, feet and hands huddling, Don's tone and instructiveness, Zoe looking, Zoe's color, face, clear eyes, C's description of elves and plants, Saturna, hello black beauty, etherial traveler, I like to be you jeans, strap shoes. - When the mother - I lay down and dreamed her in dark and purple clothes, the ritual of being passed from one to another, all the men - With some people past where the car can go, it's a long walk around a mountain, map shows spiral up it, I've left my things in the car, will have to go back and then carry them, a cougar on the grass, dogs? Hangars, realize I don't have to make the trip, carry my things, it's their home (distance as Seattle) not mine. Evicted from a rotting house? Foot through porch yesterday, Carole watching. Luke crying. Bee foot. "You made me walk too fast!" I hollered, that was familiar. Capably soaking the foot. 'the body and its subconscious substructure'
taken into Assyrian captivity and believed never to have returned
an androgenized clitoris 6 September On the grass with the new bike. Yelling bringing myself and him to the beginning of tears. "Do you want to just be in that family? Are you sure?" Feeling: oh, I didn't know it would have to be me too, to be angry and hurt. The market and the blue bicycle, this peacetime Sunday, Mark Kinsella, white dog Ezra, Chinese bunshop, noticing I was seeing differently, the little house and Strathcona schoolyard, broad pitch poplar path grass beside gravel through the fence, walking into fishscale shadow lines. Hymn in the broadside church, Josie on Diana's porch, the little girls [Lara Gilbert and Anna de Courcey] in what Carole calls, I successfully named, the philosopher's garden, the little spruce, balsam poplars calmly turning their big leaves, blankets, making the house, Anna's white underpants, "'tend we got shoes for Christmas and we don't wear them very much."
- First day of school inner schoolyard. [poet visiting from Ontario] Pale eyes without light, dull pale eyes, eyelids held tight back in soft thick skin, a blanched face, mouth repeatedly barred. Gazing to see, what's the true form of this face, what does her authority look like. I can't see, the barred teeth are unpleasant, make me reluctant to speak, topics I am current in too, but why do I think she'll be able to tell me nothing (in Morocco a bull torn on a hillside by male maenads) and the reflection's unpleasant, I must be falsely inhabited by that mythology, a lip cyst, a bleached little redhead girl, tall permeable Celt, does she look shocked, is it the unfamiliarity of her body, I don't know what a body like this is like, a good tall frame, but who took the light, was it ever there, receptive to the great year, but if you are, what's wrong with it.
Jane. Yes she's really somewhere, how she looks complete as though what she does with anyone isn't already wrong.
Came in white Indian cotton shirt, the deep fruitflesh under it. Lying on the sidewalk grass verge looking up at the paper wasp, maple tree, muscled heart, bullet hole. They whiz in and out direct to and from the door.
A way of being submerged in the whole, so your voice and what it said would come to me (not singly) surrounded by a full sphere. Rickets - calcium and D, softening of bones rachis spine When a judgment rises use it as a signal to go deeper. You do not need to ask questions or report back to yourself. where you feel reluctant and are holding back
Luke in his bed reading from the Junior Voices - that the book has been waiting years (that it was completed down the line). William Morris. Reading it in a higher voice perfectly in measure perfectly inflected as I would, in little turns and edges, lightly - naked on bed, leg crossed over at the knee, reading Walt Whitman Excelsior. Jane the hint of intelligence, in the sense that it's possibly constructed. "You absorb yourself in people." Morning was clouded, later when Luke had gone to school, blue reflected on the skin of the side of her face, under her eye. From the dreams, I said, a remaining sense, what was it of, it made me remember, autumn at the Olson house, the clear sky, small colors, a yellow willow leaf, the stretch of rubbled smooth grey fields on the way to Grande Prairie, the house, green sweater, being in it looking at the family's things. Now: I'm trying to recall the slight deep soft memory and signification, slight, excited, a story, without its own detail, exactly how did Nordhagen speak. Walking to the bus, two middleaged women who see themselves and each other as young, one in neat black jacket, the other in long black nightdress and red Chinese shoes, walk laughing through the park-like streets to the bus stop, with the white curly old pup. Three boy women pass them on the sidewalk. One stares, it was she made me see this picture. ll September, Luke gone to school.
-
- Wake, she's woken first, Ezra, maybe barked, thin crying, it's Luke, she jumps up, I jump after her, "I'll get it," Ezra she and I arrive in Luke's room, head under the cover, thin crying, a baby's wail, I lie down next to him, "What is it Luke," rubbing his belly through the sleeping bag, hard thin belly, "What was it." "A gypsy lady put a curse on me." "What was the curse." "It made evil spirits come." "How did you know they were here." "I felt one touch my toe." "It wasn't Ezra?" "No." "How did it feel." "It was sharp and hot, they came out of there, where the friendly ghost comes out." I was lying marveling thinking this is one of the moments when the extraordinary is here. "I called and called for you but you didn't come." "I didn't hear you because the door was closed. I closed it because I thought it would make the house warmer for you."
"She got used to it, she went to work to buy a caravan." The sound of the word caravan. - What's absent, I've been wanting to locate and say it, is the sense of fight for, integrity, urgency about the right way, is that sort of death slow, the opposite voices say you've lost the sense of fight because you've won it, you've lost it some while back but the decay doesn't show obviously right away, you've become ordinary. The devil of course isn't a person either, what is it, it would be the force of lapsing. Robert was an image of someone still in the beauty of separatedness. The falling angels feallan lapsus slip, labi to glide In dope the way I find thoughts not connecting. "I closed the book because I didn't want my body to see it." Is it being satisfied with the exchange, J, having Luke here, the times of tensile work and not being in pain and fright. What is it like for the spirit to be that one. -
and get an image of what life within those walls or within that plant is that's in our language, which in an out-of-body thing doesn't exist the moment I realized I was going at the speed of light horizontally, I switched and made a right-angle turn, rounded a big hill and went up. and then I started to experiment I was in total, absolute, completest silence I felt like a beaming source of light, I felt like a source of light that could illuminate the darkest corner of the world It started as my belly wall vibrating, and then everywhere I looked in the room everything started to vibrate into a million molecules. And in front of me was a form like a vagina. As I focused on it, it turned into a lotus-flower bud beautiful colors and smells and sounds in the room. It opened into a lotus flower, and behind it was like a sunrise, the brightest light you can imagine without hurting your eyes. at that moment the flower the light was full and open, the vibrations stopped, and the million molecules, including me - fell into one piece The next morning I was in love with every leaf, every tree, every bird, even the pebbles. I know I didn't walk on the pebbles but a little above them. always spontaneously when I least expect them but Shanti Nilaya means the home of peace Age regression hypnosis and reexperienced her birth. -
Rupert Sheldrake A new science of life
A substance synthesized for the first time can be made to crystallize only with difficulty. That surface sublimes, or vaporizes, outward, producing an immediate cloud of ions and gases that prevent the radiation from continuing down to the next surface glow discharge chambers wind ships language language ethics a little German girl Mama wo bist du your body would change too -
"I said, Fight me! don't let me do that to you!"
the pact not to lose clear conscience
- Friday - since Sunday slightly starving, milk and fruit, stealing 50 cents from the steambath, risking the welfare cheque to pay telephone and rent, J is away offended and though I send you respectful love I'm not going to call you, M on the phone, Luke said he wanted to stay another day, I know her fantasy and won't give her pleasure, am dry, the two small stories I was working on these two days are nearly as good as their material can be, but they are nothing, I can judge writing and it makes me think I can write, starving because of the awful feel of fat bum in tight pants, one of the stories was telling me my rage of superiority was fury that I had no lover, it was six months and I was ugly, the job is unbearable unless I sink into newspapers and magazines, I've been sexually nowhere for most of four years (and maybe she has but she looks fine), working days, five in succession, almost empty, nothing to write in the journal. Now I want to know, I was bold and always got up some romance to make me lively, what is the barrier, virginity wasn't one, compared to this - no one or everyone, anyone, is how it feels - holding off something you're wonderful, in a puzzled tone, you're devoted but you don't love me, you don't love my story and want to know me backward and forward in it, you don't imagine it and I don't make you who does know, T and C. The empty kitchen, radio, when I come home I can't read, there's not a comfortable place in the house, it's as if I don't believe I'm going to live here, the slowness is unusual, no fine contemplation, a blank with nothing new in it, endless catching up work, doubt, the platform was removed but I still don't know whether I need one, is any exactness gained, she is too doubtful for relation, I'm disillusioning Luke without grace to win him, what's left, eyes imagined seen by the boy, they signaled bold heart over my teeth sunk into an orange. With Daphne it's turned into sulk, I won't talk to her. When I look at it I feel a small wanting to laugh. The worst loss is J but it's been expensive giving up sex. There are little things in writing I like but most of them are like the Cosmo stories evocations of glamour which I think are worth less than finding intelligent relations and even that I thought next to the shampoo bottles is just decoration. I make pretty things and don't trust them. I make clear stories that have the shape of stories and so are junk. You Dorothy Richardson. Money is silly, owe, again, a thousand and a half. Camera and tape recorder I don't use, it is a life in disorder because it can't decide how to be, it produces small undistributed images, keeps no connections, and that's true, but what does it do instead. No creation. Dark circles under the eyes. Heavy haunch 5 days without food left heavy. This is an old voice, London. No library card! There was something I changed for, I hoped to give up the partial successes to win a new mind and I did sometimes arrive in it, but what is this, the old mind in worse drudgery than it ever would accept, and thinking of crimes to enliven itself again. My honesties seem to have made me heavy Carole's birthday. Twelve cold oranges in a paper bag. Her face at the door is beautiful, I notice when I can, in greeting negotiating in a way that must be brought from before, her party that's over, Al in the chair in hat and cold and medals, I'm here to eat French bread and egg salad, wine - you don't know I'm here to eat, sit down next to the food, ignore A, watch her when we're speaking across each other focus on him. [Carole Itter and Al Neal]
Woke in the dark feeling the truth of the dream - I don't want it to be an instruction - but I want to be in my truth as I'm not now - I don't want to be instructed to go to Paul, Carole with Al, but Daphne with Roy? Is it a solution when the handsome and child-begetting man is irrelevant or ungettable? I am looking for a contra to scare me back into the middle of my feeling, the other one the refused one I know her the truth I'll love someone for letting me into. Then I'd have hot cunt for J too letting something happen. Well and is this my odd formulation I've been fastening on for years or is it a specific instruction about Paul. In the dream he was steady and unrebellious willing to be sad for his truth. In the life I know him in he's that double-tooth evader. Something was true to him.
Feeling of food burning on a clean slab. The nice-looking man I put into #6. Over the counter "Can I take you to lunch tomorrow?" His smile, fused teeth, is all pain. "Your face fascinates me." "There are times I like it too ... you look like a nice man but I'm gay." Deep lines, he has to walk out in front of my scrutiny: he's limping! Narrow shoulders, wasted, caved frame. Putting on his windbreaker, going around the other side of the van. I said no but checked carefully whether there was something other than pain.
The discipline in English sentences making everything connect to something else. It an be there because it's lovely, attractive, brings the feeling of charm, but it must seem to be there as information about how something is done. This particular pain is how. Pushing the brain ahead, thought ahead.
It's pain, suspense. I'd like to know whether pain is always information.
With Roy I learned it was. With J it seems not to be and that means either
- here she is black and sheepskin - she doesn't know or I am a false machine.
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