| edged out 10 part 5 - 1985 january | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
1 January 1985 Evening writing the magician - qualities R and R, then mine, and others' - then seeing Dirk's way in white magic. After reading Emergency childbirth I'm seeing it in the blue room. 2 T with her hair up and J yelling at T. "Why do you have to take J too." She goes home. Left with J. Protest, complaint. J leaves. Cubicles, opening the door to each, an arrangement telling the story of a person - toothbrushes, little things laid in certain ways. The last of I think 4, a washcloth hung over the window, I register, and see another over the mirror - the next door is hung on one hinge and empty. I'm in that one. Hear J in the first. I'll follow her, where's she going, to T's house. She looks cross at me. Through the grass to the door. She's wrapped in winter clothes, grey scarf, holding a full canvas packsack she's going to load on a yellow bicycle. She's not replying when J talks. I sit on a chair. I think J is going to draw her interest and I know I won't be able to. Looking at the bare walls, long room, very different from when I was in her room last. The carpet drawn up at the end, halfway up the windows. "Shall I water your plants?" I say. "I'm not going to be coming back" she says. J speaking to her in an intimacy I have to see is real. She sits down talking warm and pretty, they have a life I have no entrance to. I demand I want to know why she made an intimacy with J who she didn't need. J starts to answer, I cut her off - "I know how she got you, she can do that with anyone, I want to know why she did it." Querulous. I'm looking at T as a place high on the wall, thinking, why am I speaking to her as if to a god. There's no answer, she's gone. J at a small closet, opening the door, a locket or token hung at eye level, writing on it "J" and some numbers and letters. Fondly, "It's her code," three sets. She plays it on the keyboard. 3 notes - 3 higher - 3 lower. It's a theme. She looks up the music book index. Something - fruit and vegetables - The love of three oranges is what I was feeling toward. Sitting with J at the closet, quietly, she's touching my breast, steady and clear it seems, lighthearted, calls me T. I think she means that T is gone but I am her too. Wake into day, with feeling all through the abdominal cavity - light alive and spacy - thinking of a lot of things - New Years resolving - the room like Olivia's room - she worrying now about my soul, I trying to tell her for years, my soul isn't well - the bluff and defiance I'm in toward all of them - the beauty of what I came to, that I'm not living - I'm childish protest toward - the standing I was in, in desperation - she, now. From earlier waking, I gave myself this induction: I come home on the plane, he meets me at the customs exist, doesn't speak, takes my bag, walks near me, he's in joy that I'm back - in the truck pulls me to sit near, he knows I'm not there yet, he's content. I've had an exciting time and am seeing everything. He drives straight up the mountain. There's an alpine field. He's brought food. Makes a fire. Makes the bed. it's glimmer evening. I sit and look. He cooks. We eat pancakes. We lie in bed. Lie looking at the black and white. He has his arm around me. I don't think about him. I fall asleep. He smiles and begins to court me, at first by imaginary touches, he brings his plasmic body around me, he furs me everywhere, nips and kisses, he makes me deeply asleep so my body can want him utterly. He's deeply content and assured. He wants me utterly. He doesn't move until my body turns to him and opens. Then he comes in. I wake into what he's accomplished. I'm all there. The mother's, dazzled. It hasn't been left. The young boy. He's playing. Confiscate his pencil and lock him out. Three long pieces of foam. Attaché case that's a portfolio. There is a person to approach. Learning how. You can not accept my loving child. Taking something on quite boldly and brilliantly. Transform feeling about sex and gender toward feelings about persons - how far can I go with women - "how far one can go in intimacy." 3 Was it saying I should pay my rent - Choy's men moving the bedstead out - following him to the car threatening the rentalsman - he jeers - "Did you do this?" to T - then theatrically howling in the corridor, "I'm going to lose my garden! I'm only having this baby because I have a house and garden" - but earlier, in a building I often visit, I was checking again the flat I like so much, big rooms, a fireplace, kitchen west to the treetops. Blind white all day. The cadet prince at Richmond Palace [photo of Luke taken by Jill] standing in a dapple of shade and red maple leaves, in a pink arch. And Sarah [Black] back from her years gone says "Dear, dear Ellie." I go under in the afternoon. Cold cheek kissing. Brought good food. Wants to read letters from England. Is there still time now to have a day's work - 4
5 "It's too late! I'm alone with my work, I have to find something in my work." In tears, why. Roaring at her that she discouraged me about the Valhalla writing and then used the form herself. "So you can acknowledge what you love in the writing, at the time and not years later when you've found a way to use it yourself." She that I should have persisted, smug. She thinks she did. I did but not through to success. Is that true. As I feel it. (Loneliness weakens.) For her ear, I went further. Why am I crying. Is it true I was craftily emptied into someone else's reputation. How does it feel - this last match - as if she had a careful plot and I was careless. When I exploded she had what she needed, and it has to do with her position in her other fight. A feeling of having fallen into a set-up and also not caring. The way sometimes I just stop. "Intimacy is when I really try."
Since then grudging, mean, sour, as if everyone's against me, or useless. Grieving. In combat monitoring: yes I'm alright because I don't care. I'm crying because I have to withhold my best. I'm not able now to separate speaking to myself from speaking in rhetoric. That sense of really having to begin again. Not any more having the contact with hunger for the best way, to drive me through. "Crazy lesbian forced you." You got what you wanted she says. Odd how between times I get quite glad thinking of what it's like with a child, but when I talk to her I feel she cornered me into a suicide. Lesbians' revenge. I did want a child. Maybe I've wanted with her the relation one has with a child. What do I want now. I do want sweet being with a child. I want it so I'm not in slavery. I want level intelligence with a grown love, real love in bed. Regard and movement. Coherence growing more, spirit life. Learning fullness love comprehension clarity reality creation.
It says: the mating part of you is womanly and has to look for a magician. The whole of your destiny isn't that. The outcome of this child and your leg is still in the balance. Accept relations of competition as such. What is my work? Hierophant. Intuition, teaching, inspiration, marriage, alliance, occult force voluntarily invoked. What relation to England? What's my relation to T and R? Same. If I took on saying, being transparent, the body I want, being true to a young one, clean money, feeling, the other separate, Luke and his family, "Something to do not something to identify with." In candle work looking for vision to make something happen. Very interfered by the two quarrels today. Remember balance in speed. Sun and shrunk snow today. Like April. Is it night or morning? It's coming morning. Because she says "Oh I'm so sorry" I go on simply. "I like to be in good terms with you, it helps me, but -." Lying in the grey hearing her sob, "I feel I'm damned," in awe at the difference it makes. "I want to be a part of it." Willing to say. And that it was work. And she's speaking sanely about them. "A lot of blood shed, and between them, by the structure, and it's out of their control." The break of sanity there would sometimes be with Roy. She says it seemed vengeful and I say yes it was because I had been crying so much wanting her to admire my writing. "I was even writing like you so you'd admire it." She admits there's a wry - 7 Cool Gruson [Dr Val Gruson]. A cyclamen. Night trying to gather. Stiff. 8 On a roof with little Luke, a way down, he's afraid he can't get down there, crying. A window open, hot room, boiler room, we're inside and see newborn twin girls wrapped up close together, he and I looking, a beautiful black-haired girl, seems a strong big head. Sleeping. The other is like the back view. Someone coming just now. We were going north toward the school, Clearbrook Road, not liking the way there's no path still, the traffic is too near and harsh. The calendar of equal quarters 91 days and Worldsday 0 January and Leapday 0 July. 13 weeks per quarter. Holidays quarter days.
9 At the Carnegie steps standing still about to go back into the street I'm turned very slightly by the gaze next to me - it's him, he's been waiting for me to see him - I'm so amazed I fall against him - looking at him, knowing it's dreaming - his smile, it's him, head to foot - At my house, I think - still looking at him hungry to see who he is - "Do you want something to eat? What were you doing in Montreal?" The answer is clown school but he reaches his hand to my face and kisses me, holds the sides of my face. He's smaller like a fairy boy or faun, is kissing me very mobile, fast, hard, with willful complex tongue. I'm thinking it's more will than eros, but how do I know what eros will turn out to be for him. At least he can take initiative. I take the chance to touch his shoulders and sides. Wire. Thinner than I knew. When he stops he's lying back saying he's hungry. Sounds like an order. I'm completely soft and breathing hard. Wake up. Go on breathing hard. Earlier, with Paul in my house throwing dead cats out the window wrapped in a sheet of newspaper. In the cold they'll stiffen and I can clean them up. One is in the tub black hair floating. No - a sound, someone trying to come in, I think the doors are locked, I'm afraid it's Jam, go to one of the middle doors, a neighbour girl saying hello, red-haired, friendly but keep her at the door. He shows me she's in the hall with a padlock she can't get open, locked to a man's padlock, someone else's bigger padlock holding them both. I'll go out an unlock hers. Moony from this - then she gets me talking about calendars - laughing and it's gone - charting the years' shape - counting hours of daylight - going to Hons for curry beef. Yoga and then cyclamen. Like looking at it, hate the words, but imagining that if I had the foundation in London [BRAVA Foundation], the camera bolted down in front of the potted cyclamen, a moment a day. 10 Suddenly the effect of the sun, the book, the cappuccino, the Colosseum, the whole mad city of Rome, cumulate and I say to myself very solemnly but very excitedly, "No, this month I will not work because I am going to stop procrastinating and write a story." (The story is about Madame Matter and Jean-Jacques and me.) And then the story of the room. Story I couldn't write. Integration not finished yet - I don't seem able to grip myself as I've sometimes learned - she was hungry, battled to be, took in so many, integrated by words - the use of avid description - and the one in the break saw - description wouldn't hold - yes it holds - against sight - now I have to battle it through - I won't give up the reaches of what I knew in that time - and won't be them. How I've integrated before - by going on. 11 Find myself with a broom going to sweep Rhoda's stairs, the impulse is certain, but I'm sweeping inside the place, she hasn't swept, she's changed it so her bed's in the back room. A platform at window level on the other side of the room, like Burghley Road, a lot of dust, I'm scared she'll come back or perhaps is in the front rooms. Watched the color of the light under the door change. Am'nt sweeping well, perhaps it's a ritual gesture, and so backwards down the stairs. The new downstairs neighbours are in the small corner of the garden digging in the back, their vegetables have come up, they're putting in new black soil and sprinkling food. Many flowers. Burlapped trellises over the whole space, grapes, but I say they have to uncover the far edge so the roses - Having been picked for the job - a black-haired woman demonstrating canned peaches - peach cannery - "From the taste, tell me what chemicals are in the peach" - I only can begin but would like the job if it's learning what plants are - the young woman says "For instance, is there citric acid because it grows near the sea and its sulfates? Or -." In La Glace School thinking where'll I join, but the Grade 12 room has three desks with ashtrays, staff meetings it seems. In the big chair in the living room by the heater. I cooked supper because she's away. The young girl in her nighty. When the kids have gone to bed, he said "Come sit here by me," in the firelight and heat. The bedroom door open to warm it. Stroking and kissing make her soft. His hand under the nighty, as if finger is incest, the deepest sweet. Gathers her in his arms and carries her over the threshold into her mother's bed, takes off her nighty, lays her down and kisses her breasts. "My beautiful one," lain over her kissing her mouth to reassure her, and working it in, thick, and in the night she turns to him and then he to her gladly. Meantime thinking, what is held by the hold of incest and taboo. Le Guin: she goes on from sublimation. J's use of its form. Then: being at the foot of the steps to take the mail. "Your letter strikes to the bone. I'd no idea." Then stamp stamp stamp up the stairs. Her best face and who but C in black fringes carrying the refrigerator. And a big man who when it's posed draws up: "For unto you this day a fridge is bourne." J and I laughing. She: "And he doesn't even know." I, touching the back of her down vest, "Everybody knows everything," wondering, what is it I'm knowing? C creeping out of the kitchen where she's quickly looked, shaking her head the way she does. And his letter quick stuck under the bed. "What I loved in you was your closeness to pain and death - that you'd been where I'd been in my furthest dying. I'm not mistaken. I still love you. It helps me. I am deeply bound to something in you." - About this - that I felt it shift into depth and the rest seem chatter - and then seeing J's voice in it - does it mean it's to her. That I could say "I love you Robert. Take it or leave it." Heart banging. A house with many young men. He's out sitting in a field looking remote - I sit near him - but carefully - want to hold my arm to cover my breasts - he's cut his hair off - he's ghostly - going to get my boots at the pond, I see the water's risen and frozen - the boots are under the ice, I break it to get them and come up with two dead ducks or fish, spongy - water squeezes out - but put 'em back and is see they're feebly swimming, trying to feed - one puts its bill on the surface and chaff comes out - chaff or bran. At the house, seeds on the steps, hard corn and grains - I ask Paul can I take a handful out to them. 13 What'll I do - it says - go to Montreal - yeah he'll have - like a frenzy - what's it for, now - for a capitulation - alright heron your fish is starting to swim very close to your feet. Owe Alpha 41.68, fare is 329, boots about 60. What's different. I was ferocious to get what I gave, now I imagine being willing to give almost nothing - because why - I love his heart. What do I hang onto in this letter. Your letter strikes to the bone. I wish I'd known. The distraught hand. He says something about sexual difference, oscillate - a wider - my tight blind - day/night one - smaller than the ones they leave for - fallen from the nest - skinny and ugly - brief interlude - "Every time I try to bridge the gap I end up badly" - ache you'd think I'd be in-you-rd by now - I hate this fucking - that why he's afraid - love and leave easily - but, dear E, spend a little time with him - your delicate touch has never stopped growing - beautiful and wise beyond words - would you? 14 "But I can't stand never seeing you. I want to come and see you at the end of Jan. If I mustn't, wire me before then. I don't want to frighten you. Say no if it seems wrong to you. I am frightened myself but it seems the worst is to stay in suspension." In the morning arriving in the camp with car and trailer, going to look for him. See him come out of the shower, had his clothes on washing them, they're hanging heavy, jeans, he's thin, small sharp face, looks like curly Peter O'Toole. Sleeping bags with sleepers completely inside, I know it's not the first one, it's this big double down one. Turn down the flap and look at the wet head, looking at me, little smile. "You've changed your image quite a lot" - both gently - "Yes I realized I had to." That was late second sleep. First was a very complex battle with J - like last night - she in sewing machine cabinet with slats piled on. While I was at UBC yesterday she arrived here - "Alright, here I am, what's up" - compelled and then frightened - "Your place was so tidy I was afraid you'd left" - phoned first time when I was in the bath thinking of her left - Second time I had elbow on sewing machine speaking into it - as if. 19 Jesionka. Begins with birth book - double or more - the lattices - bothered me why - interference of hard edges - linoleum cuts - images of brain function - ends with blind light and alarming sound - would sensitize or brutalize - the peaceful sea - oscillating - aggression and disarray - not disarray, objectlessness - an interfered seeing that comes to an uninterfered seeing - which is still a blinded seeing - the mechanism of dreaming - an overlay - mechanistic - remembering a dream, picking which coherence. The sharp edges - hemispheres What is interfering - coexisting but the kinds of edges are like an ugly culture What's chosen to see - the cut of the interference Henry Jesionka 1984 Resurrected fields 16mm. Whatever you want to show people is what you think you don't have. Not committing oneself to the image Not having confidence in the image - engineering a situation of unrequited seeing - overpowering - controlling the pig slaughter, deformity - a pressure to show one's stuff technically - what kind of erotic it is - very jumpy - never have time - demonstrated complexity. Interference - if I thought of it as a demonstration of interference - the experience of interference and sorting
Completely see - predilection - hardly begun in tuning a physical world Consciousness technology Birth, water, yoga, eros the silent intensity and complete concentration of his the miracle of her willingness to trust The subject of death may enter the periphery. The essence of death is created through the blend of Neptune and Pluto's combined pulsations, an extraordinary
Saying: I mustn't lie or conceal anymore. laying open the hidden heart in wars of mutual benevolence The dream bit I didn't remember, was my mother saying something - the cut (?) man, meaning the devil. She was in another room, I heard her voice excited finding out she could read the future, "I see --- and ---, there is the cut-neck (?) man," not quite that, meaning the devil exists. [I get a phone call saying the baby is a boy.] And in the early afternoon seeing many directions defeated. "It's a -," between one second and the next, as if by losing this toss my strength is gone in every direction, my relation to everyone is weakened. Its relation to the ones I side with. A world of heart strength collapsed. I wanted to teach her to swim. Grace and confidence and glow. Brilliance or dazzle. The poverty of it. Learning to love something you hadn't wanted. "So much of the way you are with me now is because you anticipate hurt." 18 Small-shouldered boy, father-husband. "At the beginning it's the confused birth, and then at the end it's the clear birth." [I say to Henry about his film] He saw two triangles superimposed over the sea horizon, it frightened him so he ran away, and then went to the grail legend because he hadn't asked. And made the movie to bring him back to the seashore. The mix of leading and following in both. After: on carpet, yoga. Phone. Arm up, "How are you feeling now?" "Sad. I went to bed but I couldn't sleep for thinking of your difficulties. I smelled sperm." "Was it in your underpants?" Laughing. The story of Mai-lin lying down, J lying beside her, Hava crying. She liked talking about how she loves the loveable one. [J offers me the money to fly to Montreal to see Robert] This morning I call and ask for the fare - make a booking - pick up sour cream on the way to the old route, already a strange city, mild air - it takes longer now. Ezra clean and subdued, the little flat shabbier, fainting with hunger, red soup. When I say about what will we know "Yes I do thank you very much for forcing me!" the strange newness of holding the one I used to - she sobbing - "I want to love you so well" - phone rings - who we feel panic with and not - kiss on the cheek - "Happy birthday sweetie," and the image in the pocket, the opening of the quilt for the tired one to have a little nest. And Ezra in her old coat settling. Looking together at the lovely dream paragraphs. A few seconds, should I be watching to be sure my other desire doesn't - but it seems that is taking care of itself. "They all think I'm a fool." De la Roche. If it's really way out there. "That period is so wrong." "Yes the last in a paragraph often ..." 20 The only pain you've shirked - night waking seeing what was bought with $400 - she sees into. I haven't told either. What does it mean if we admit. It comes down to T.
Imagining we could face it. Outposts - it was T in me she first loved, and then my country, which was myself. R in C. T. Her concentration into small parts of time, letting the rest go and hiding them. The helper and its cost. The way you handle time, being old in the mornings and ageless later. One spirit to know the whole, the others will only know my strength. Undiluted. Firewater. A complex structure of dislocation which will reach even to you. Last night saying we have a month, let's do everything, let's go all the way. Please say yes. You could have both she's been saying and oh the glow thinking of
"Deeply and gladly" Soberly: a manic day - love frenzy - then Cheryl, massive transfer of files - violence and the sacred - "I have only the ground I'm standing on" - taken the sacred away, because people in groups sacrifice someone - I say: "You have to see their failure" - "How did you get so smart?" Then Leah - so easy to find what's her rage - "I think about him nearly every day" - "You must pray to Aphrodite like this: Make me brave and make me smart" - like cocaine speed - then supper, Patricia holds the stage anyhow, Ammi is quiet at the stove, Henry's the technology advisor crossing his wrists over his genitals - I'm thinking how is this kind of thing different in maturity, not being able to come out, and not let in except by Henry's advocacies, until the meal's over and Ammi brings his balance. [Dinner with Amnon Buchbinder, Henry Jesionka and Patricia Gruben] The lovely smile across the X, knowing it's Thomas Tallis. Henry holding his side open toward me. Caution much more with the big woman. Tony's elderly deformation. When I look at the mirror in the strange house bathroom, mine too, mined. So shining with Leah. This morning early trying on clothes, manic from tea. The fantasy is wild, what does that mean, and what do I have to find the unworkability of - whether grief and disaster are enough cleared to make the enterprise steady - wondering about telling Leah and watching how I do, is it abuse - the way telling seems canceling - more willing to cancel always. Leah in it is alright, also I know the quality of the fantasy is dangerous to it - but what is it in mornings - I'm jacking now, something that was true weeks ago. "How are you taking it" - "Shocked" - the music after the question said For auld lang syne. 21 Dreaming about last night - leaving the supper party, on the bike, the short farm lane onto tarmac, pitch black, start riding, realize I can see nothing - a car light for an instant shows a bend I won't know when I come to - PG knocks over the beads I'm sorting on a tray - I grab her script by the top pages, shake it till it crumples - rant that if she's mean to me I'll be so mean back to her - Waking think again I can write Jill. Have to be so careful now not to deform spirit by speaking to the side. This morning it's been bitterness - you can't keep your hooks out of any of your friends' friends - you'll be more in love than you ever have been - the acuteness of the sweetness of that cleft down the belly. "There is a frustration" - "Your power is that you have to do it for both, your faculty of opening" - "Being opened to, when it's good and thorough I don't feel any frustration, I feel discharged. And clear-headed." I said you were clunky. "That authority is made from knowing what you have to do." "You prefer your version of what I am to what I actually am." "Trudy said that too, she said she didn't like it while I thought I was doing fine." "When it is your turn to touch you perform those gestures -." "As if they're power?" "A wonderful force that does surge through me, it is like a very pure energy. Maybe because there isn't a localized sensation. It's not coming, it isn't that brief cleanness. One is in a position of respect to the other body." "It's your bad humor afterwards." She has chosen her pride over the true. Grief - no not the grief - over what we both want. "One can't open until certain conditions exist." "They can take on the kind of imitation of block-headed men." "No it isn't, it's that I don't know how to get into the state." 22 It had been gone these nights. On stone table burnt sheets heaped. Round lumps of plastic flaming small and long. Girl burns her wish. [Robert wires me not to come. I burn all my photos and drawings of him downstairs in the garden] - Knock. The girl out of bed wraps - what - the sleeping bag - runs downstairs - takes in pen and signs slip - delivery man handing parcel through, "Sorry to get you out of bed," smile. Opening it surprised heart's knocking - I don't want a book - book - "The last time we fucked" - snap - the sad one - oh - with a child - why is he doing this - I tell him yes or no - he says no and sends his picture and his story of the woman gone - you need to be alone she said - images to cut me, the girl naked on a rock with her watercolors - silk and reggae. What am I crying for - high pressure ridge - I am all wasted - smoke pressed down. Then hit by the car. The young woman - I don't want to look at - fed up - thrown over - yelled when I saw the car start forward - hit the pavement, shoulder and stomach hit though I'm lying there on my side - for a minute sulking - and then getting up and walking the bike to the sidewalk and standing holding it, ignoring her. She says "May I touch you" and then I have to organize her. A bit meanly, "You should probably move your car it's going to get hit." Pink Lady courier. "I'm not going to sue you. Scrawn poor intimate face. Thinking - miscarriage - maybe the story is proceeding. And Jam-Jar goes back to her old ways, false mystery. Screeching wailing sobbing. 23 It is polio sickness days. Sore neck. Newest moon. What happened at six was I sat up and wrote angry words - in the dark again, said if you ever show up at my door I'll hit you with a broom. Woman pregnant drives him off the porch with blows. Laughed aloud. Thought of a telegram, "You're such a chicken." Realizing balance is back. And so-less strength. Imagining making a book for the summer run-up. On a bus standing with older women in the front, Portland Oregon, I might be wanting to get off but he's not stopping. Where's the old part? With cheap hotels. The waterfront. Over there back across the sound. How do people cross, a rail bridge very high, is it a footbridge too, there's one, but is there a bridge down the direction I'm going. Cutting through a domicile. A sort of people, children playing baseball all shades of redhead, solid brown eyes. Bedrooms, a lot of dolls in plain dresses, brown, dark check, the women stolidly gazing as I pass through their corridor, seems they live in rooms on one floor. Passing open doors showing corners of bedspread. I've found a door out, in the direction I want, but have they sent men after me. Yes, two men following, and where I am is a road going through a waste field, clay and white clover. They do catch up, the first of their menfolk I've seen. They're thick like farmers, solid fathers with ox eyes, the same reddish tribe. I hold my book in my arm so they'll see the title and spare me. The story switches to a quick wrap-up. "She said she plays guitar a little, plays the --- --- ---, an old song. It turns out she's a master player, harpist. They exclaim and invite her back." - I see a black and white film with spectral color - it comes where - by surface - interference - grain spirits - a few words, written spoken and slight electronic - color and - super-8 - layered - pleasure chemistry - take the motion - smoke light - working with essences - a love realm - faces come through - quickly well up - titania's gash - as light in light - bright vegetation - infrared - a joye - scinan - the neon sky - plant cloud tissue - color torsion - want to show my music - want to make seeing intelligent
sometimes lines white shots through their visible presence is their discourse 'the dark sea, the dark sea' and trust oneself to it two overlapping screens or veils one sound, one meaning, neither of them real their overlap and interplay their shift and movement in that flow nothing to take hold of angels red voices a burning a shift of light when water rolling down a roof suddenly flashed colors the water-pipe angels suddenly appeared with her white dog fairies -
new tales of navigation the daughter represents the Self for her Better than the films, to be eating supper in a strange house gazing at Ammi Buchbinder in a jumpsuit, so spare young vegetarian body pronouncing his final consonants like a fine child, cooking attentively, bean-lentil burgers. Sweet smile I like to come up against. 24 Press Gang called together for lunch. The women printers figuring a format, a room with couch, blanket and cat asleep. Papers - the green blotting. [I order broadsheet copies of What will we know. Laiwan hand-mixes the ink.] Walking to shop, getting into a car, a weak feeling, the stomach muscles not in their place. 25 Night waking: unconsent eroding, is that what she did. Not liking it cause I think it's little him. J-M and Dennis Vance, letter from M sore about Ed never thinking of giving her what she wants, and her friend died. It was remembering what it's like to have no free movement. Thinking to look at the story since it has part of its outcome - is there worse disaster to come or realize - poor creature one. Depressed means let down, droop. Eat, eat. Newspaper, radio. Lonely. 26 Luke is taking the road below, I'm in a taxi on the long overpass bridge, ask driver to stop at the verge on the other side, snowplowed. He doesn't, seems to be going on looking for where to pull over, seems to be passing some though deep ruts in mud. I'm frantic pleading please stop. Luke will come to the road and not find me there, not know to wait, he may go where I never will find him. Weeping, telling the driver more, the baby, how Luke will be angry. We're getting further away, miles. Finally he turns into a drive, very slowly, suspense, I lift the lock button in case I have to tumble out suddenly. We go back. At the mouth of the tunnel a boy. It's him. The fare is ten something. I give him 12. Judy Paul and I on the road north. Pleasure to be traveling without luggage, only some t-shirts signifying it's alright to be a woman. More. At the Valhalla house we're back at, lamps, the stove, bristles, a gas flare in a pipe. Forgot: traveling with Luke a passport, photo on the back, man woman and child. I look close at the boy, like a Dutch boy maybe, Janeen young, shovel nose, wide mouth, humorous and not stupid. I like him alright. What is a day like this - night uncomfortable, morning not wanting to get up, until finally I think maybe it's sexual inertia, work with the toothbrush handle, it's alright, but always has to have the sweet first seduction, comes mildly, finished immediately and then I can get up, go reluctant to the Zen Centre, Adam doesn't want to see me and I'm evasive as if with no one. Eat a lot of bread and cheese, read the paper, cook heart and cabbage, fall asleep, fear, wake when it's dark, read Joy of Cooking, then finally impulse to look at what it is. A bath and now: it's a Saturday. What would it take to not be ashamed. What I'm ashamed of - radio newspaper junk reading, the way I eat, evasion with persons. It is coming to a money limit, Sunday Monday Tuesday $2? Being will-less, unwilling to take the trouble to untie the cilantro. An unbearable anxiety, what to do. Thinking I was going to body love gave me immediately a care in how I did and to not neglect. What if I just sat in anxiety. How to eat substantially when I haven't the presence to prepare food. What about sexual shame making worse absence with people in case I show hunger. Eating sugar in the morning seems to make stupid. Thought, after the dream, maybe a country foster home. Send her away, she is continually screaming. 27 In the office waiting to talk to a man at a desk, he's the landlord, the apartment I keep wanting to rent, the one on the right with the fireplace and east balcony off the kitchen, I could draw it for him. At the mirror arranging my hat, veil, red and green ribbon with the veil across the face. The way I'm standing, right leg out of the skirt, look down to see, it's slit denim, cowboy boot, howcome I'm showing right leg like this. He remarks across the room. I say I know. But next up is her, thin mean face. Look at her cold measuring. But when I look again, talking to him animate and pretty and young, legs crossed up on the chair, she'll get it for sure. But then I see she's spreading sheets of manuscript, she's there for something else. Back in the warehouse, big area, and out the door in the yard. They say to go. Looking for (Philip). Driving one truck seeming to be burying another, or is it the other way. Beyond the yard the upper decks of freighters passing in the channel, one very large one I keep looking back at. And a shed or guardhouse I recognize, have been past this yard from outside. Big space with things. The small feel and spacey of walking in it. They're just closing up. 28
Ruin pain desolation sudden misfortune. What his name might be. Shevek. Wanting to send R The dispossessed. C wants. We sit cold on the bench, backs to the sun, grass yard and lime trees. The Chinese pines. She's got a pressure, of explanation. "It's only a labyrinth when you start wanting to get out of it." In Loong Foong. "You don't hit a mother." "Oh that must feel like she doesn't care about your spirit." What she's been meaning to talk to me about: "What you've done is ...." To force me to learn to love unconditionally. Doesn't matter who, she says. Looking light and live pink and grey and clean cut of eyelid. Will be nine years. Later, on the corner, she says "I love you." A real hug this one. "About time you knew that." CRASH in the next street. Young man's bellow, Fuckin' asshole I'm going to kill you. Etc. Paul at his window. Cold and steam breath. 29 In the big truck parked on the top of the knoll, in the grass, talking to Mrs Sieburt on the cordless phone. It's like a little radio. Wanting to tell her my number's been changed, how do I use it now. Little button on the side. something about power I think. She demurs. "I think you're incredibly ." She means that I am consulting her and not deferring the question to the men experts in machinery, her sons. I say "It's you I want to talk to and I'll talk to you about anything I want." As I talk to her, seeing the images of sailing ships, the sails, upside down and clear little at intervals in the lower sky to the south, where the sea is. Linking, I know ships better since then, a recent dream maybe, a memory anyway, of being on a shore where freighters went by close in. I saw them better, I knew them better, than on Saturna. Storm has come up, wind, big brown waves breaking crests on the windscreen, shaking the truck. I give up trying to get explanation from her, we say goodbye friendly, I'll see you Friday. It seems safe in the truck but I get out to see if it's inching forward, feels like it. The tracks, front wheels have receded from their furthest. But when it surges forward it does go past. I watch it creep up but then turn, wheel around some so the upslope will catch it. A tall strange man, a mean face, his dog. I say "The dog's scaring him," the horse. He says "Back, ." The dog like Saturna sheepdogs backs off but flattens and growls. My horse quiets enough so I can try to mount. The stranger puts out his hand to hold the bridle. I do get up. From there feel like I could go ride in the storm, but there's my friend I shouldn't leave with this man. He's talking about, what, going up to the house and settling in for a spell of shelter. Wake up. Get to thinking about Valhalla, we could go up with the little boy. The different levels of contacts we have there, like Helmer. If we rooted in for part of every year, bought some place. At Loong Foong table yesterday laughing with C about giving $400 to a therapist I could trust not to rout out what I feared was my actual necessity, which was to have a baby. She says "If you brought it out you wouldn't have had to do it, you were protecting your desire." "But I didn't want to do it!" 30 Yesterday, neck lying back on hot water bottle, couch in the quiet park nest, remain of the light hands touch around the round parts. Long story of AGM: seeing the new arena for next years. D and B in a door looking in at the world they form. Disapproves more wine. "I only said it because you were so distressed" - her idea of an even trade - I was for some reason saying the parts that most attach - "... so long as we do it every night" - and the depth there was - and story of the kimono - but it's singing - trying to put into the story of fidelity to male phenotype the fact of power struggle - "... and then it would be a family, and then ..." - "I don't have any objection at all to your phenotype. What do you want to be? Think about it and tell me." What's the difference of mind with both. It doesn't look so close. Today with money playing with men in stores it comes to speaking out fast. "My boots are ugly!" The surprise of the charm given back. Spending. M in Produce City not bad in 3-day whiskers, patched jongleur legs. First time she said fear of seducing and abandoning. Happening to run into the Coburg Gallery man and feeling the draw of the resistance of them working for me. MIT Center of Visual Studies the plasma man. Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies Stephen Wolfram mathematics basis for spontaneous self organization. An array of dots. Each dot has a set of possible colors that evolve according to simple rules. The same rule is then applied over and over again until a complex organized structure evolves. A line of dots start tracking downwards creating patterns as they go like the diamond configurations on a snake's back. There may be a connection between these order-generating mechanisms and most all computer languages hopes in fact to establish a deep connection between statistical mechanics and artificial intelligence. 31 From other doings, a man with a young son Luke likes. I want to convince the man, who I'm not interested in, to let the boy stay the summer with Luke. Describing to him the creek where there are wild animals, beaver, deer, Grandpa Epp's log house, I want to live in. He seems to be considering it for himself too. "Where do you live?" "--- ---." "Is that in Alberta?" "No, California." Seeing the boy's summer in an American street. Asking the boy will he come without his dad. Says no, retreats into a shed. I go to talk to Luke in another shed. He's in one of his upright passions, doesn't reply to me, yells across to his friend's hideout "You told me I showed you what a mother is! And you won't -." Starting out to his friend. He's agreed to come. We're loading his stuff onto the flatbed of my truck. Drawers full of clothes. "I'll get some cardboard boxes for those." He nods. Remembering earlier. Going onto the street discovering I could run on my hands, so lightly - I'm thinking like wiry dogs - I can bound. Seeing only the lower part of the streetside, have to take care, I'm saying, less scan this way. Back and forth and then try faster around the block. When I get in I see in the mirror I'm bloated especially ankles. Was that fine lightness a toxic madness? Why today has to go to Commercial. Trying on, the stomach is very big now, tight skin and coat and even thigh, labouring at walk. The German old woman who wants at the end, is she livened by my assertion, "Ich wolte ein Kind haben, ich wolte kein Mann haben," reaching her hand across the table to tell me I'm a fine person. "Ein intelligentes Kind."
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