| edged out 10 part 4 - 1984 november-december | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
25 November 1984 Yoga at night. The morning well! Is it? On the street the circle looking at houses, Sunday morning, but an edge - like almost dropping. Pancakes, that's better. The Front. Looking for a pen, fast curiosity, how does someone succeeding talk to herself and did she say anything about my work, did she say it was wonderful. It's ordinary anxiousness. I'm in her dream, a baby and a Chinese woman lover - it's the saying not said. 'Cheryl' as I'm on the stairs - grey-haired woman I assume I know, talking in her shapely way - I ride on her lap without feeling it, except going on weirdly about "I know you're a horse. After a while I suppose you became a mare." Big liquid black eyes, and her little breath as if smothering tugging in her belly at my back. The dinner I wanted to be empty for candida - after it still monster farts - morning sweet father touching. 26
27 What it was like with Michael. "What brought you?" That I picked him for his lack of power in the world. When he takes his hat off staring: what is this. "I have a confession to make. I thought I was in your anus." But afterward wanting to sleep I was imprinted, in the morning dreamed Roy had gone on to someone after Sara, young dark woman. On an afternoon we're going to visit them, I'm changing her baby first, something she doesn't help me find, I'm frustrated, the others have gone in the car, I think she's stalling me. I start saying so and then an impulse to saying everything, "You know, I hate Roy." She's ready to defend him, I've said too much. We run downstairs, I'm pushing the little girl in the pushchair, then, yes we're going to, upstairs. Stopped by a missing step, to the little girl, "Can you climb here?" I have to stop and repair the horns of the pushchair. Door crept open - I hear the radio music they hear - who? - something on the steps - grapes and new Earl Grey from Murchies - spying later at the bathroom vent, the low voice is hers, I don't love it now. The gold wire grid, was it re-taking or using their stone, the image of beautiful head. 28
29 J and I in the kitchen, go in the bedroom - this is the East Place house - Rhoda in a cut unstitched blue silk, T fitting it - "Rhoda you're sewing!" - said in way to say my surprise, it's not understanding yet, the blue like my kimono - she puts on a red kimono, over, nothing she says is intelligible to me - I back out saying, to cover, "I like the blue - and the red." J (at my place) at the table speaking in a way I'm feeling is like my mother - I'm in the corner, Rhoda at my mother's place, J from something they were saying earlier "Are we going to be able to signal each other so that we see each other often enough?" - the anguish is going to paralyze me but I suddenly say "Are you guys in love with each other?" and come to the table - they speak very close to each other's faces, R has her fingers on J's chin - she says "No-o ..." doubtfully - J says "Slow ...." Heart wakes me, sorry to stop the informing flow. When I touch my breasts in bed I want her to be there adoring them, I'm wanting it like she can - unconsent eroding - sure, and a black slip on these, for you to put your fingers down in - I don't care who else you touch, if it would make you want to make me every night. They're beautiful fat and solid, melting tips. A discolored spot on her chest. She says "Your idea of licking it wasn't a good one, it has a worm in it now." I can see it under the skin, or something, sliding in curves. 30 A room somewhere, the other and I going to find it, I have the sense of direction, a tunnel with branches, but I choose - we come out on the second street of the address - I say it, San Sav-i-eur. Past the other street on the directions written on the back of the book - this book - no, the other, but I can't see anything written on it - we'll go on - exclaiming - the forest poles - from there taking the slopes very fast down into a red desert, it must be too far, but still there may be the turn to the left, and the room where we'll meet them - someone we meet at the bottom, can ask. Michael last night - when he's there first I barricade behind pillows, the sense of sick attack - staring - you're not real to me I'm saying under - but crying and yelling - "I know what you want, you want a kid" - "No I want you" - that jolts - the way he says it - "You don't know me" - "I do know you, I know you more than you do, when I lay down with you something happened" - "But it didn't happen to me" - telling him I passed on the suffering to him - he says he doesn't have it, but he looks as if he does - also he looks clear and clean like a boy - the smell of manure - "I like it too but that's all there is." What else: them in a day. Reading Water margin and Nine cloud dream and HD biog, without use, ashamed. Glass gardens - again. Campbell River? Is there a hotel for $145 with hotplate. Sleeping bag, typewriter, dictionary, iron. Luke in the Newton Rooms. 3 December [I consult Norma *] "A very intelligent, very fine human being, you're sensitive, but with a clogged liver, clogged skin, clogged intestines. If you don't change it, it will go on to ---, arthritis, senility, probably diabetes."
"You're a very strong woman and you need a very strong man and you haven't found one yet. You're very yang." Telling stories about her own marvels. Front tooth gone, housecoat mama body but moves well, tall. "In two years I'm going to start my own church, it's going to be a church of healing." "You were made to live to be a hundred and twenty but your mother wasn't quite well, she may not have known it. Without half trying you should make 95." I say "Are those numbers a code for something else?" She seems not to hear. "Barbara has a melanoma but she's going to get better, it's metastatized but she's going to get better. Go home - it's so cold - have been fevered - dopey - and spotting! - oh good am I losing it. When I tell her and she says "It means you're having a, what's it called?" "Spontaneous abortion?" "You're too far on for that, a miscarriage. I had that once, at six weeks, it was twin girls." "... If it means there's something wrong with the baby." "It doesn't mean there's something wrong with the baby." Then her eyes holding hard and mine drop. Night fever and ache. Last winter it was like this every three weeks, wet at night. But in this day it's at least not the queasy sickness. 4 This early morning the light on the brown wood - like a brown light - I get up to see - the southeast a great orange shine - the west, with frost, smoke, the towers in glow, ivory and blue - though still and unmarked as if very early, three children with satchels - when I'm back in my covers it's with the Clearbrook house and the good family, so softly unusually glad, the wood floors, Madchenzimmer the best one - Oma schooled somewhere in a fine house (and he giving it to her). 5 The plane has a door open, from outside, on the wing, maybe, telling a man passenger, making big mouth words, want him to tell the pilot, will he? Someone with me says no, he's deaf and dumb. We've landed on the beach, everyone's gone away to their hotels, someone inside still, I crawl in to tell her, come out, we've landed, she crawls with me to the hatch, at a slant we see the lights and water, it's beautiful Vancouver Bay. They're coming out of the inner room, I step behind the door and draw it open to the wall, Rhoda and her brother, then I step out, just see his stripe wool suitpants, shirttail, he's thick, a DP - scrubbing something off Luke's shoe toes, scribble in ink - R goes but the brother's around, I'm looking for something in a drawer, see a line of writing on a piece of clothing, I think it's Jam's but I see it's hers, there's more around it, nice, she has books coming out. The brother says "You and Luke, I'm always seeing you with books, what are you doing?" I say Luke has no one to play with, and for me it's the same. Upslope for me, on Pender, meeting a black Mercedes, such a small head, like a child's. Downslope for her: a bundled bushy labouring poor person, wool socks, buttoned coat, gloves. Beautiful money, a head close-hauled, a warm room and eyes holding their cold will. When I come home with shopping I come in round the front to see if it's parked there, it's not but where our paths cross there's Rhoda without a coat, the moment it takes to take out the garbage, the meeting look that reads her state. She says hello, I don't have to say anything. From her platform: "I hear you have complaints against me." "They're old ones but I do, yes." "What." "I think you have some too." "No I don't have any." (Oh you're even are you.) "I think you do." It's not what I'd have intended to say - it's not wrong. It's another dry retreat. I don't know what it is to the dreams. (She got something from J that should've been mine, that I died without. She's working, I'm not. She's myself, I'm not. And on that, she didn't like my love presents. Helen must be reborn, that is, her soul must return wholly to her body. It's three months. Being closed again by the sugar mouth sickness, looking for blood. So dark, twilight all day, coming off the porch or back, from seeing Bill Chow, the deep water glaze on steps, pavement, grass, in the grey dark that scares me, a panic of smothering in lightlessness, saying it's the death month, I have to go on through. Distress of having to think of, choose, travel for, meat every day, and swallow lumps of vitamin. The sacrifice and crackpot. People sick and almost without food in families. Happiness at the table together in realest life. Aft dreaming a highway. In a truck, hitching. To the girl, "I thought some of my sister was in you? She'd been subsumed I thought but as she's not -." Gather my sleeping bag and want to look in the other parcels, is something of mine in them. I owe something for the ride, a penny for every -. 89. I'll make it a hundred, scratch a cheque on the steering wheel knob. I'm at a service station, restaurant, which direction? To go back to pick something up that might have fallen. A hippy couple, I'm looking close at his decoration - explaining that these and these and these beads look like some I had, I can't help looking whether, and he's come from there too, maybe he met my sister. Earlier was it the East Place. In the early morning thinking of Lutz and Marion coming across from the Slade, oh the place where that kind of magic was happening. Feeling my young beauty of the time was the beauty of where I was and what came to me - My death and ugliness now, spirit's, that nothing marvelous can come. 8 "Hello. Hello?" As soon as she could, she said, to not be like Ashrafbi and Percy, who cut off. "I was so afraid you'd do something so I could never convey it to you." I don't know what. Sometimes being able to gently show, so she'd agree, why I 'resist.' "I'm afraid I'm an anachronism." "I'm very confused about where to locate myself in writing." "Yes you are an odd backwater." "No, that you have to make it alright for them so it will be alright for you." The shocking inconsiderations. It changed when I said I'd been thinking how unhappy she'd been with me, from the beginning, and that it was class and culture. "Manner." 10 Exciting, best clothes, black red blue, going to the doctor - in fine town - sun and snow! glass on the streets - cyclamen, iris, Christmas trees! Persian carpets! expensive dresses, patisserie, shrimp, little peas, a big Red Delicious, a liquor store, paintings - croissants - basket bassinette - among the expensive shops I'm feeling looked after. [first consultation with obstetrician Val Gruson] Early in the family waiting room - more than one receptionist being nice - and don't make me wait and aren't suspicious - I'm liking to answer questions and tell about me - in a small room with the door closed - in comes, quickly scan as she walks four steps, white, blond, she's weak, a bit ratty, Brenda Firestone (round eyeballs, very fine hair, plump middle), girl's voice - but she soothes and doesn't scare - we'll get to the yes and no next time - "establish a rapport" - watching how she does it - "That's the placenta" - surging. For once perfect delicious supper, couscous peas shrimp lettuce. Night comfort Mr Truth - a hotel downtown - sharing one expense account breakfast, waking early to be together, going away for the day but meeting again hungry in the evening - what are they doing - the dream is that they're without exhaustion or confusion, they lie together, or sit closeby, their bodies are balanced in feeling, and then they find they can enlarge it all around them, they are together in thought, they move separately to dare or show, but they see together and they're working forward together. It wasn't until they were in a smaller hotel in Campbell River, and snow outside, that I understood they weren't making love they were learning. And then that I'm dreaming what I've also had, even Michael. 11 Judy. I move something of hers to be able to open the left window, the right doesn't open, to see the mild night and clear stars. When I close it, more candles set round, have to move some, stubs in dishes. She's coming back again and again with complaint, I've put everything back I say, and hardly disturbed it before. She's really grinding on me. I grab her arms, they're so thin, yell at her finally from the door, "You skeleton, you're a skinny slave." In London two girl babies, one's Andy's, a dark blue and white little check dress, pink skin, dark blue eyes, standing up, the other's like the pale creeper from the waiting room yesterday, a lively bubbling together. In a room the Japanese man maybe, feel a clot of fluid, I'm ready, but when he comes onto the bed I see we're visible on the mezzanine, to the floor of people below. Around the room, motorcycles, at least five, grease on the carpet, I don't like our having them in the hotel room. A man hanging out tat the door, like a spy. I close the door. Talk today, Bill Chow averting, only later I think it's cause of how I look at him. "Talk to him." BC Royal - the way Cheryl talks about working and is nice to me - "If you present something humble you have to present it in a way that isn't humble" - anything about presenting work I'm sulking - what is that - she says "You're busy digesting." Then J calling to see if she can dent me - the hold she still has is that I want to be telling her she hurt me, I want her to have it in her story. Telling her I tell myself victim. "I seem to have given up on myself." Now wondering whether the way I talk to myself about myself is more of the holding myself to accuse her. I'm killed, you did it. 12 Sad today. Little tears. I'm dented: by both. C showing. I won't care to give a look of authority. And how did J do it. I did it: last time she was conceding and yesterday I neutralized my strike too much. Position. Feeling how many ways I've backed off showing power. It feels like backing off even more. My writing can't compete with hers, I won't write. Film. Trapline for its mind had London, I don't seem to have the mind on my own. The slides are wonderful but they aren't in a form bringing me something. And I don't make them anymore. What else, what will we know, that small concentrated thing, yes. Humble work. A defeated person shows her defeat and kills herself for being defeated, sentenced to illness and then immobility and slavery with a child she has no hope for. This morning thinking of Jill again. And then the day. Tearful. Buying good food. Eat first, call and make your declaration when you're stronger. No answer. Write it. Crying. Then cry loud. Then I'm lying down. Stomping up the stairs, ziip -
"Are you going to let them?" "Yes. Otherwise it's just defiance again and I'm not going to. They can have you. PLEASE, take her." What I'm meaning in the vehemence in that is, this oblivious person who can only think to use my sorrow openness to patronize me. "With writing like this, I'll take you on as my writing student again." She says: "Either you're going to take on your taboo about abortion, or you'll give it away when it's born." I feel: she's instructing me to get rid of it. Indeed when I've talked to her I am the next day wanting to give it away. Then I think it's the reverse, she wants to put me in defiance to be sure I don't escape by a later wriggle. 1. I'd like to have it decided: I'm defeated and now I can only go on. I want you to be sorry you defeated me. 2. I can't stand your meanness and oblivion. I was already defeated when I took on someone who couldn't humanly see me. Or her. I quit. This morning in sadness thinking I want to call her and say I concede, I'm defeated, you win, by quality and ignorance. I declare I'm bankrupt. I'm ashes in the heart, in my work I won't try anymore. I present it in rags to say I'm defeated, I've lost face to myself. I can't be in that circle because I've lost face in it. I can't with your friends because I have no hope of feeling them equally interested. That writing was my last hope. When it failed I flunked with you. That's why it was crucial when Rhoda wouldn't acknowledge it. You wouldn't look at it 'til after your book. And you brought your writing out in their auspices.
With the others I use my eyes to give them the shame. I'm pretending to be defeated to justify my getaway. When I know I've got away I'll stop acting defeated. "When I have my balance I'll still be alone but I'll have my balance." "You won't be alone" she says. "Yes I'll be alone" I say. 13 Your company is very precious to me. You are so fragile in relation to contempt, I must guard you very well. What I wanted to hear. I want her to go on finding out whether she still has her success. "... though you have left your chair temporarily I think you've run down the sloping path to the sea or lake shore. When you return from watching the seals, or the birds, you will make tea and then return to this sunlit room to work at your papers or slides. I'm coming to share your tea and the room." Laiwan. The sense of action in writing. She wrote something happening. Thinking of Housing. What the formality of her language lets her do - a native formality of thought. I had too? Downcaste to explanation. Eliz. Luke. The distance. Tony with tears. Annabel.
It means concurrently that she is more vulnerable when she opens herself to these experiences. More vulnerable to aggression, and to derogation. The man who should be the guardian and student of these abilities in the woman has in our age become the proud and envious aggressor. [Redgrove] I'm saying to her: that's why you've lost me, you won't - And then I see what my vow has to be: dear one, your company is very precious to me. You are so fragile in relation to contempt, I must guard you very well. Tell me how. 14 And then: what about ultrasound. What do I know. It's expensive. They're doing it routinely. It's an intervention without regard. And then amniocentesis. I want to know if it's a girl because if it is I'll begin to dream a relation to her. And something about procedure and obedience. I seem to be willing to interfere for my reason but not the procedural one. Night storm and rattling water, the night waking is personal too, battling J, complaint, you've lost me because of how you are when I'm open. You interrupt what gets me into creation, you cut me off, the way you are puts me in that suppressing relation with myself. Then I battle the obsession - is this my (body) complaining to me - the forehead knot is like a screaming - why's it screaming - I'll feel into it - then have forgotten myself and am raving again - other enemies too - thinking, let it speak then, and listen. ... stupidest most wasteful use of my openness, you can only mock bait jeer - Then: I do it to her too, I use it to get even after her lordlinesses when she's strong. So much oppression in the normal course. "You put yourself in the inferior position." "God, you can't tell the difference." It was looking away over the roofs. 15 Dyslexia - ear infection - concussion - inner ear system including cerebellum - reading difficulties cured by movement sickness medication - after up to four years, stays better without medication. A night from the motel bed through first year of marriage If the preference was completely certain If the bodies were in very intense secure pleasure and always in match If they're always lucid and read each other infallibly They're not greedy or speedy in sex. They're radiant loving with other people. They have separation without going nuts. They separate the right amount. Their work comes from what they do together, each goes away and makes something to give the world what they have. Music and image, acute mind in. They're not jealous in work because both are marveling in their own. They're not anxious and fast in talk either, they let it get ripe. When they have children they don't fuss, they're just incorporated in the intelligent time-making and world-giving. 16 After all night talk like reading fast about delivery last night Kitzinger and a book about Leboyer - I give birth alone in a room and don't seem to remember much after - then am away in a camp, I can't get back to the hospital where it is for weeks - downstairs Chinese man and a television set, they had their baby recently, a high bed with pile of pillows, he lets me in the room when he's at work but I've come in accidentally when he's there - the last at a seashore - making a model island then beginning to look - islets in sand, a boot, a bashed guitar, a bookcase with glass doors, I'm collecting a pile of small things, a barnacle that grows three-deep, cup size in beautiful colors - there's something about singing - young women neighbours rehearsing dances - from the book collective. I wake up strong and bright saying it's because you won't let me love you! that I've been barren these years. Caroline's voice. Gold-colored landscape, two eagles on the left, in the water, washing, I say to myself I'm going to fly, I can go as high as I want. Seeing the golden land below. She sings, there's singing, around her, she sings harmony. "Such a beautiful song." She and Debbie on the clear water in Nova Scotia, two hours trying to catch a lobster, diving. "It seemed we'd been under the water the whole time." "I'm going to get him caught." The warrior of naked heart gives up everything that separates from others. The Toltecs have no use for sex. You recapitulate. Everyone with whom you've ever played do-you-love-me. 17 The day I was crying he wrote me about his defeat. This morning the clear crescent in the centre of the window in tender first light. Economics - holding off Luke and what will we know for PG. Andy's business voice, "Someday we'll come out the other side." And Luke chipped - like chipped DNA - disaffected. "Five foot seven and a quarter." I keep laughing. "I can't think of anything else to say." And then her, knowing it will be sore. "We can leave it at that if you like." "Alright." Then I go to take out the garbage and find two big envelopes, one in a hand I'm thinking I do know. Montreal. Very slow to get it. At Sunrise Market in the narrowest corridor R looking grim. Good I've got her mad at me now. 18th 5 am waking from dream David Rimmer lodged with us for a month. I come in my sleeping shirt early in the morning to where he is in the kitchen, the television set in ashes. She Judy in just her shirt sleeping on the couch. He was with her all night. Another night we're all three of us in a bed, he and I waking, he's so vain he's written a version of his name, something Martin, I'm declaring maybe not aloud that her writing will never be any good, she isn't serious. He says he's in desire and he's climbing on me - with his little thing thick - I say I don't want it but that's pride. he should leave the bed cause the parents will wake soon. Judy wakes. She'll go with him. From this, thinking whether to tell Robert. No I won't help him through this winter. Or send him a wire saying marry me. A counter in a cafeteria, one of them on either side. Michael on the right goes to get us hot water for the instant coffee. I say to the big black-haired one "How are you doing?" He says straight through "If I had a BMW then we'd talk about it." M comes back, talks to him. He doesn't reply. M: "Can't take it eh?" Black hair gets up and leaves. I look at M quite close pleased he held his field. Something I want to try to say plainly - when you send pages like you do of lovely eros longing for home it affects, attaches, some way claims me. I think you know I was what's called in love with you at Slave Lake. Shockingly. I don't know if it's true but I've sometimes felt this horrible dead time is the price for having refused myself the simple truth of putting my arms around you in that motel bed in Slave Lake. The way you write about women is like a beginner so vulnerable to sexual dazzlement you don't look at the woman in the body, you don't know how to speak to her so she feels seen in her spirit. I'm alone but I'm with child. The space between our bodies vibrated, an electric field charged with brilliant ions. I could sense you within 500 yards approximately, as butterflies smell each other. And whenever we got too close our eyes ricochetted, not able to maintain contact, because otherwise I'd lean forward so far I'd lose my balance, melt into your skin, which would spell the end of the game. [He wrote about Wren] 19 A mansion to rebuild. Living with my folks again, hope they'll let me go on so. the long garden with autumn rubble to clear, frozen and smashed pumpkins. I'm going to do a lot. Backroom. Lovemaking - the womb doesn't let it through, quite long afterwards it's a narrow hard eggplant. The midwife tells me what they do for hemorrhage. Leah says "You look healthier than I've seen you for years, your hair has so much vitality."
I've sent it - It says put up 'r shut up. Very gently. 20 I don't think I can afford chimerical love I've been in with you. This summer it went away. I was glad to be free of it. I'm alone but I'm with child. I have to find my real life, no more dream lovers! Forgive me for speaking so plain and for refusing to work with your pages. - I loved to read my letter - Early - looking at the sky - ivory yellow - deep snow! The frisk all morning - fresh ions - in the dark the phone rings and I have it cheerfully, knowing I can hear the depot behind her - she's happy - "It's working out well for me, I'm feeling very fond of you" - babbling while Joyce makes coffee - thumping - today gumboots might not be wrong - so lively looking at the traffic - it's not light yet, slogging in three lanes - clumsy snow pelt - the gathering at the bus stop - on the Oak bus as it turns the corner the man from Carnegie gets off too - "Is somebody from the Carnegie having a baby?" - "One of the kids I work with, yuh. Her mom called me and said she couldn't help her with her breathing. I went to all the classes with her. It's my twelfth." Personnel - the councilor - talking - it handles - jokes - it's quite firm - but mature, uncharming - fast and not special - gregarious. Creeping into the delivery suite - a little nurse in green showing proudly the delivery room - "She does beautiful deliveries" - they don't immediately do eyes - but no windows.
21 I have come to revere 22 Noticed thinking about being with men an image of myself small dark and vivid. Then: ordinarily these days, broad massive matronly plain.
What brought him - few days ago I read the story and liked how he was - in bed mooning sometimes a slip of a long narrow one - mustache and haircut, don't like to look, though when we confront he looks smarter - diabetes both grandmother and grandfather - god damn! - I act sullen and am often having to sigh - I won't have this - but it seems dangerous to say as he invites. 23 Hands cut circulation at night. Parts of skin cross-fibred? Counting days for $2, 3 more. Paul K lends 10. 24 A room where I'm lying beside --- who's in beautiful sleep - I'm awake like this in night morning and work - how - I open my eyes I open the ceiling I look at the sky of stars - I look in a region, I see closer - the Valhalla seeing - I've turned, to lie on my back - should I be beginning there - fall asleep. Began in pain about work and this giving-up. It was munching its hand - little bright hand - a fine textured grey area the placenta - just in front - black amnion - she - the bright line of the femur - a bright spine. The nurse behind my head murmuring so I can't hear what the ultrasound technician's saying to the gorilla who said he was an obstetrician - the supervising doctor an aristocrat Pole who when she sees I'm studying her expression pretends to smile behind the file she's holding in front of her mouth. - A moment after the needle's come out, she's staring at the screen - is in a hurry to pull out the transparency - "Everything looks fine" she says and leaves - but when I've put on my shoes and come out in the corridor the three women excited around the screen, nurse, technologist, supervising obstetrician - I want to stop and see but their language, is it? babytalk, has made me angry and diffident and I'm not sure it's mine. But just past the screen "She said she bled just a small amount a couple of weeks ago." Their tone's excited. I'm stopping to listen. Then stopping in the corridor. Then sitting in the rotunda angry and stopped. I can't go ask those people who speak like robots and are on to the next woman. Two nights ago a rehearsal where I see the one who's going to do it, I don't like him and ask for the supervisor. Should've been more careful to wear socks without holes.
25 Waking in fantasy, if it's deformed how I'll walk out and hide it till it's past resuscitation. At court speaking for myself. I was responsible for conceiving it, I was responsible for its injury. I've woken Christmas morning dreaming child murder - and I have to think the small one knows - its anxious chewing. I'm making love to myself - he says what he's going to do - a man knocks asking if there's a video player going - T bangs her doors - an Oriental man stamps up the stairs - I go back to the man in the bed who is really the baby in me, and Robert and J. This time it's going to come through slow and deep exquisitely. What it means that I'm imagining a deformed child to kill - she is hating herself for failing in love and work, she wants to kill her deformity and survive it - (and why every night am I saying over the letter to Robert) and tell the judge and have it in the paper, be in jail studying and teaching. As I was falling asleep: 'loss and recovery.' Ethyl Smyth wasn't afraid to be eaten - There were two voices - I trashed one then there would've been another thinking one - the one I sent was the wounded girl - odd it wasn't the first - old heron eyes - the first was just response. From there to ideas of probably it was Laing or Winnicott - then, that I don't travel on any of those lines - then that since those days I haven't got belief in ideas to bridge me anywhere and was that the defeat - then, how can I imagine writing philosophy. But the wounded girl was talking calmly. I like her tone. She says her love calmly and doesn't hide her circumstance. 26 Night pangs. Going to sleep on a mountain - other side the fire - says "Are you cold?" - warmer if we share - and when I go into the bigger bed, spread my cover too, and lie down into both our arms direct. He hid his love letter, or maybe it's to somebody else, in the middle of the manuscript. I hid mine in a refusal. It was a good move. 28 Yesterday Leah confesses she loves Sky. Wrapping her scarf. Library. The night before typing with candles on the sill and one on the ribbon spool - east, west, and south - battling through - finding - drawing the horizons - when she blasts music to stop me, crashing forward, it has to, steps down the stairs finally, sigh. Go ahead slowly again. Tried at the end. Not stopping before. Yesterday evening, north. Gaskell Gordimer Neruda Darwin. Widwifry. Last night three sequences of dreams, different than they have been, very clear sequences. This morning in sun, to begin anywhere, Madame Degen, huit Rue des Hirondelles - active - with Gordimer, imagined able. 29 In a plane looking through the porthole at Luke being greeted - a fey face - Sieburts and my mom going to look after him when I get off - at the luggage - customs - they can't find my bag - "I think it was a blue athletic bag" - "Mother, I've lost my luggage," wailing but it's not quite sincere though it does have my work in it. C - good idea! Expecting the later call - yup - but it's the other. "I wasn't expecting you back yet, though yesterday it felt like you were closer." She sounds cranky and confused. Snow powder on the street - looking in a window, joined by - I'm just looking at the Coburg - nonsilver processes - "the way we do it" - she expands me about the baby - this time the story of J and what happened - "And then in June" - "His innocence?" - "Yes" - "Strange the way we're attracted to our innocence in somebody else" - "There were things in his work that I knew so well" - and after that we talk about her obsession till it's nearly time to go - I brag how well I handle them - advise revenge - she says it's acknowledgement she wants, just not to be cut out - but won't get it unless she does strike them down - new stories - "I chose you" - always something about J to disturb - "Complete control in a very small situation." At first I didn't see you, I didn't know you were walking with me, until your roots pierced my chest, joined the threads of my blood, spoke through my mouth, flourished with me. Thus was your inadvertent presence, invisible leaf or branch, and suddenly my heart was filled with fruits and sounds. You occupied the house that darkly awaited you. And then you lit the lamps. Because we were sown together in the earth and we alone did not know it. 30 Morning beef and eggs and milk and toast. Careless hurry - the carillon banging - but bringing the love of them there - what I remember and knowing how much I haven't got - the question of charm - knowing concentration's hardly begun - it's le musée imaginaire - among photos, the passport with revocation. At Tak Kee - bulky wools and in face too - talking about Robin [Blaser] her best comes - the gesture he makes toward his ankle with his skirt, he mustn't show his legs - 4 friends dead of AIDS - "Tell Ellie" - Robert in kidney failure - Barthes' world of the glance. [I'd sent my manuscript to Robert Duncan and heard nothing from him] Things to flatten down - "I didn't think you were that tyrannized by them" - she flares - a consciousness not a difficulty - I don't believe her - what do I want to know - whether they had anything to do with what happened in 1981 - the difference of the story when C hears it - you failed - she says "Somebody once read my work in a jeering way and I forced her to go on until it went to respect" - "You don't see yourself, you don't have boundaries" - "I can say it another way, I don't know when I'm being attacked and when I'm not" - about the worst thing anyone ever did to me - you would never make love to me when I wanted to - "You didn't touch me after." "Something I want to know, how did you leave it with Michael?" Her baleful stare. "Did it have anything to do with me?" A less clear reading. Who is RM for me. My voice - my husband it says - pleasure, liberality, fulfillment, happy issue - I think it means the feeling of, the figure of.
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A long fight with many folds. She tries to get me back. A year in India. "I could have a very good time with ---. I find you larger." A kind of fighting with silence on my side now, in the end. She tells me a secret. "I've been tempted this fivefold" and I don't know I'm going to say what will reveal her lie. At the last moment. "Happy New Year." "Do you say that to people? I don't." For me - the tarot mate, magician - for who - ace of cups. I said I gave her the half she needed, she wouldn't give me the half I needed. Crying for how it was with them, "They brought me to a certain point and dropped me. It brought a situation I don't have in my memory. There was good writing too, they couldn't see it, I was razed. I can't tell the real beauty from the false beauty." A tear. My body that seems androgynous to her. "You don't seem to account for that." Absurdly insisting on my femininity. Thought then that's what it is in my letter to Robert that makes me think he'll come, saying I've changed my body. Wanting to write Judy. And in the writing not trusting the judgment to know what's good. Many mistakes.
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