| volume 10 of edged out: 1984-85 september-may | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
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Another miserable shameful depressing volume. Part 1, mid-September, in flurried misgivings, unideally but boldly, I conceive a child with Michael. Part 2 illness, fear, isolation, desperation. I'm so poor I rent out the back room to have enough money to eat, and then have to put my bed in the kitchen because paint fumes in the middle room make me ill. Cancer scare when there's a lump in my breast. Part 3, in November an early version of Notes in origin at a Cinemateque women's film festival. Jam returns; months of indecision follow. In part 6 the women's community sings Bread and roses at Pat Smith's memorial in theUkrainian Centre. Amnon Buchbinder invites me to show the multimedia Notes in origin to his class at SFU. Press Gang prints a card verision of What will we know, for which Laiwan hand-mixes dark blue ink. In part 7 I spring my 7 months pregnancy on my mother, who turns grey-faced with shock. Robert MacLean comes through town and stays overnight in my middle room. He may or may not be interested now, but for me it is too late. Jam buys a house on Wall Street in East Van. The volume ends two days before Rowen's birth in late May. Reading notes: Le Guin Always coming home, language origins, Melanie Klein object relations, holography, Tarthang Tulku, economics, calendars and Greek customs, Llewellyn How green was my valley, The yeast connection, MacLean In a canvas tent. Mentioned: Michael Voskamp, Jam Ismail, Cheryl S, Roy Chisholm, Laiwan, Trudy R, Rhoda Rosenfeld, Paul Kinsella, Jan-Marie Martell, Cari Green, Jean-Vi Lenthe, Anna Buchan, Ellen Tallman, Sally Potter, Chick Strand, Caroline McLoskey, Dr Val Gruson, Robert MacLean, Henry Jesionka, Amnon Buchbinder, Patricia Gruben, Diana Kemble, Josie Cooke, midwife Camille Bush. Downtown East Side of Vancouver, Saturna Island, 824 East Pender, * W 6th, Ovaltine Cafe, White Rose Cafe, Cineworks, UBC library, BC Royal Cafe. Sheila Kitzinger, Gruben Low visibility, Sweet Honey in the Rock, documentary about De Beauvoir, Water margin, Nine cloud dream, HD biography, Emergency childbirth, Jesionka Resurrected fields, Stephen Wolfram, MIT Center of Visual Studies, Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, Philip Dick, Tsvetaeva. |
15 September 1984 "Comm'on little girl" - her little head. In a break she phones. "I'm going to put on a skirt." "It's not my birthday, even." "What would it take for you to get pregnant?" "I'd have had to come to a moment where I consented to myself." Tired and not registering. Watching - am I agreeing? Alright you've got it. Talking straight. In the moonlight. As if it should be seen as momentous, but it isn't, it's not quite focused. I notice I am going to consent. Whether he'll notice. Whether he'll back out. With it in shallow, looking into his green eyes. What's this like. Dim. Afterward she brings the dragons' eyes and papaya - I eat half with her and the other half in the evening with him. 16 [I transcribe Jam on the phone] "You can't have it the way you want it, where you would get the good relation to the whole situation that you would be in." "Adequacy of heart is not it. ... that both of us would always feel was a home ... built on sand. That's been the wear of this." "I did not make a true-hearted choice. Somewhere along the way I made a choice. What I kept on seeing was the mixture of the ways it could work and the ways it absolutely did not work." "That word that you use, 'haunt,' what it had to do with ghosts. 'Honte.'" [E] "No, the shame is failure. If the moment of certainty fails everything has failed. ... next to that feeling of shame there's a little spritely feeling." "Which is?" [E]"Which is that failure allows one to do something new." -
Tansy patch - Sunday's evening - we go to a field to see the sky - I'm leading to the tansy - boys on bikes over behind it flying on dirt humps - looks flattened open - a square hole dug in the path - find the place by going broadside to the tree - the stand of white clover - it's the only one - sit down on the tansy stalks - "I can understand why Jamila is still crazy about you" - "If she'd been brave enough to be crazy about me she'd have had a better time" - sitting down in the matted tansy - bright yellow heads and brown heads - the scent when he moves - the depths and tumble - a mound of blackberry with one mix of colors behind it - the one tansy stalk moving more, searching, behind it's the keenest white blue - the cottonwood itself all motion - the four on the playing field dark new growth plumed over tipping west each with a different weight (the whole factories of sound passing them) - color changed when we look up - that one look wins me - the pink one with hands. Kill deer, killdeer, these evenings. What auspices. It's not the old relation - in the hours with him watching the way it's common laughing pleasure - this is what I most need to say - my time was dead waiting, bringing me to no, impossible, this! a story I know about, brilliant woman living alone with an ass, doesn't like the kids either - (then: seeing what is it) - real arms and not hogwash - Some kind of wellness / and / it's wondering if my distinction's gone - it is: will my beauty go. 30 Crows in a balsam poplar, a crow quacking. Between the ocean and the warehouses the clay plaza, our Sunday plain. We're sitting close on a beam under the poplar, yellow tower behind our back throws single leaves. I hear footsteps, turn round, it was water knocking on the stubs of piles. There are Canfisco pallets, portable offices, a dumpster, two men lifting planks on a pickup. He doesn't come to the end of wanting to be close to my body. I'm looking over his shoulder at the beautiful two cement warehouses. A shout, something thrown, he saw it, the crow bombed a cat with a bun. There's the bun lying on the gravel. We go back to look at how to fix the room. On Keefer he stands with my bike, I run across into the Tak-Kee to get a parcel of sticky rice. Dear Jam: I never would be persuaded to have a child with you. The reason was none I told you. It's because you want it as winning. Listening to how you try to persuade me even now, I go stone cold. You're still a shark. He says, "The first time I came to your house I had such a strong impression when I first came in. I thought, she wants a baby." October 2
[money calculations for food, 2 weeks @ $40] 5 Not asleep, was it after the little finger rose fire flare, something Rhoda had made, some relation to Jam, a glass partial cone with thin lines like straws, bright colors, painted up the sides. There was some other piece, maybe a little screen for it, as if that piece was something with Jam. Glass with high optical sparkle, pang, she's just working to make exquisite new things and I'm going to be a slave again. Then try fierce return, I'll work too. The room - belt sanding, rust dust - the bed from the sumac house - Toyota - shell chair portaged from Powell Street - we sit in it in the alley - Nina passes - T and R in their balcony oversee - our sumac too - the right dark blue - lead yellow. Ink picture rail, floor light. Poisons. 9 Confessing frights and hates: "When I get bored, which sometimes I do." He meets with steadiness. "You're not very hot today are you." Happy when we said he can be the mother and I could get grants. Paul Klee painting in the kitchen. "Everyone will know I'm desperate." "You are desperate in one way. You're spunky." Maybe they could live here and I could live in a hotel, or in another land. -
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1 November Night wakings are to eat. This touch of remembering what it's like to be alone - then, that I'm not going to be. 2 Vitamins - Save-On clam chowder 75 cents - downpour - looking for grilled salmon - Alpha [Cine] - the White Rose [café] - Cari "Poor Ellie" - Jan-Marie - the monitor is night - noodle soup. 4 Ovaltine breakfast, then cold sweat on my lip, I'd better go home fast. Heart strain, telling myself without quite feeling it I'd better sit down on the sidewalk - throwing up ham omelette not very different than it was, in spots of rain. Bent beside the bike, the Chinese passing and even the philosopher sentry don't stop - how long will I have to be here - then, relieved, I'll get on my bike and go home fast. The air cutting a deep chill into my chest. I'm going to stop being able to see. Will I fall on the road. Getting between cars onto the sidewalk with grass blades green but the periphery closed to the spot just in front of me. Not blacking out, it's very bright, but still vision is going. Laying the bike down again and squatting with my elbow on its antler - oh I want to be in my bed. In the evening I'm in bed reading. A voice downstairs I don't make out. "It's Michael." "Hi," meaning okay come in. He's pale, he's been very sick he says, red around his eyes, hollow and decrepit. I know his plan but he can visit this time. Other winter, skating on the marsh, different kinds of trees around, they'd tear off a stem with a clubbed join to the root, trim it different ways, play hockey with a clump of frozen lichen. Late winter afternoon color in the sky. Yelling with the boys from the farm on the other hill. Or skating alone up miles of valley into the backland of unknown farms, finding the channel among arms of ice with scrub willow closing. Staggering up the hill sometimes after dark, boots after skates go flat, scarves mittens caps jackets snowy pants thrown off. I was wanting to know what was for supper, hungry, but there's nothing I can eat. 7 The thickness of air these days - suffocating - verethane, cigarettes, the smell of secretion from my crotch, cooking grease, farts, sweat, soap - but the goodness of the freesia smelt at the door. Then after, pretty Trudy. [Tells what Jam said to her] "I have to tell Ellie!" "JAM - you and I are not going to have an affair." "You're going to have a baby!" She looks amazed. "I'm glad to have amazed you." 8 [letter]
10 Kitchen - sleeping, late, sick demanding a lot of food - rolls, Black Forest ham, olives, French fries and zonked in the newspaper - sleep - rain, an amorous woman of the Tang, beautiful one the clear nose - swimming - Jam-jar you were a fool and I too, we didn't learn each other. 12 Black, gone, Monday - in bed without seeing it, reading Llewellyn - I come out saying to Trudy, You had to have her too, it's your nature you have to have everyone your friends have got. 14 Morning! Why - it's sun - and not sick - going to UBC - so hungry, spending money fast, only big real platesful, cooked not by me, can keep the wolf down. Tallis and articulated shoulders raga. French stone building, colonnade, pool, stairwell. The vivid young man who when he saw me read him flashed back and smiled, and I after one tick, too - in a suit and looking like music. 17 [Women's films at the Cinemateque] Air, nettle 1 and 2 - the intensity of silence - their attack. [two Quebec women heckle my film] Introducing Sally - Daphne's steady way of asking "In what way do we have double lives?" [Sal Potter visiting the Western Front] The moment I'm saying, across from Sal, "to clear a ...," my hand knocks over my glass, I catch it, "... space for herself," Sal's laugh and our intimate beam - beheld. 22 C at the libe. Feher's book, the lie is that your mother loves you.
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28 Less ill, more doing. 30 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. 4 December 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. 5 [I meet Jam in a borrowed car] 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. Helen must be reborn, that is, her soul must return wholly to her body. It's three months. 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. 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 whose office was among the galleries on Granville Street] 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. 12 "What's your mood?" Benevolent she says but she looks stiff. "So who won?" "Defeat won." A cracked voice. "It's not that I feel defeated, it's that I'm noticing that something in me is acting like it's defeated." "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 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. 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. And then I see what my vow [to myself] 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 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. 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. When I go to take out the garbage I find two big envelopes, one in a hand I'm thinking I do know. Montreal. Very slow to get it. [Robert MacLean writes] 18th "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." [I write to him] 19 I've sent it - It says put up 'r shut up. Very gently. 20 "I don't think I can afford the 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 [my roomer] 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. [I go to the children's hospital for an amniocentesis] 23 Counting days for $2, 3 more. Paul K lends 10. 24 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. Should've been more careful to wear socks without holes. 5 January "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. 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." I think I am a real loss to her. Her book has got her a base for next battles. I haven't gone carefully as if my life is at stake. She seems to be lying often. I believe my work is there still, I don't need her for it, but I need to be clear of her to get concentration in it. 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. 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. 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. 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." 11 "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." [I wrote to RM] 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. What do I hang onto in this letter. "Your letter strikes to the bone. I wish I'd known." The distraught hand. 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." 18 [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." "That period is so wrong." "Yes the last in a paragraph often ..." 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 writes 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" - 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 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. [I order broadsheet copies of What will we know. Laiwan hand-mixes the ink.] 26 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. 29 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!" 31 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 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." 1 February 1985 Nearly mindless, letting almost everything by. There isn't mental energy. 2nd March Breathless walking. Going home and lying down. The ideal, hope and trying, is gone, resistance is gone, I'm docile, she's obliging, I'm the tumulus, sex goddess. Her back is sleek. "What a man-maker you are." And how is it. I'm an image but it's body not head, now. Didn't know it was this you lacked, the skin between the breasts, their fat cheeks. In body allowing anything, watching allowing anything. Not often verging but with no objection, saying inwardly, wondering, it's not as I was, is it a death? The brilliant morning. At the film the way it is these afternoons, discomfort so I feel I'll die if I don't sit down. 8 Early. Dazzling mornings. Up there the trees are red furred alight deep in the weave. Tweed. Air with chlorine tang. Sidewalks bask. 26
At the reading in green coat. Roy touching it nice. 3 April Friday - find In a canvas tent to bring home, conceal on the top shelf. Monday crying, Weds his card written on Monday. [My mother arrives without notice.] Coming out from behind the curtain, "You better sit down." 4 Not able to say, while she's in the house, I hated her in that. Being guilty-nice. She went dead-grey, sat staring at the floor. Was in the bath sitting in a few inches of water. Not eating as much fruit as she wants. I don't let myself show dismay with her at all - arch over her, instruct, talk fast and hard not to let into me her sacrificial greed. She doesn't say are you alright? She wants to say, but doesn't, because then she'll have to know, How dare you, on welfare? Patting her onto the bus, byebye. 5 Cold Friday, the sun. J told her I was starving last summer - "When this society raises welfare by $300 as soon as there's a child it encourages ..." - confabulating - "Ellie is the most cruel person" - "He will think she's doing it to kill him" [ie my dad]. 6 Crossing streets without cars, cold and warm, the long view of empty roads, it's very early. Down the dock and off the end strong geese, two on pillars, one on the edge of a concrete pool. Shouting commands. It's the sea. I know it by looking at it falling deep from the end of rubble fill. The morning morning. The early summer. Creosote. How can posts sway. The garden this day draws the hiding neighbours too. Taking small self-seeds to the good end. Finding a lot of motherwort. Some of it, the valerian, I like. Moving bee balm from where it looks trod. Baring mint buds. 7 Legs and face swollen, third day. 9 We are well crossed. Many small blues. Vinca, aubretia, the very vivid and the lighter. Hyacinth. Filiform veronica. Primula. White arabis. Narcissus. Scarlet tulip, lotus tulip. Balsam leaf. Strong woodruff. Doors and windows standing open. 15 Sunday. Even when bright so weak and stupid. Couldn't garden, squatting and sun's heat made me faint. Will it go on like this - why so long there's no mental energy where there was so much - can't read Graves - three Ruth Rendell from Carnegie, it's the first I've sunk to crime fiction, is it final leveling - will I only be ugly now - am fat ass and leg, flesh looking like Mary's, doughy, mottled - is this body change going to stay the way it does in other mothers - 21 [With Robert in the next room] Not sleeping. It isn't feelably desire, it's just going on being with you. The morning face is old and strange, eyes aren't grey crystal they're glaucous, absorbant like grape or cloud. Long looking. To ask: was it that you wanted me? I am not going to say. His hands aren't listening but mine are. I won't quarrel about that now. I'm standing in what I am. The blue length, a train of hair. Both feet down the stairs naked, look if you want. Ezra has taken off. It's brilliant Sunday, before morning. From kissing once, oh, try that again, stepping into the empty street, a grey Oldsmobile and a Chinese father, I step back but he does a comic swerve. The sight of a him beginning a journey, a her come out of the house. On three faces enjoyment of the particulars of the joke. Pussy willow. Sure. A coming home touch fine-balanced from both sides, then clear people not grimacing all evening. Talking by the stove. Roy downstairs where they're hearing the guitar. Rings [J]. "There's no reason to be anxious about you?" "There's no reason." Saying it knowing what it promises, but quiet. Sitting not hearing a shape in the music, in candle light knowing but not looking at the stopped shape of the man in the black and white shirt like yours, sitting with it, in this evening came a dissolve of love like a permeating light, does anything follow from it or not, I notice it isn't greedy anymore, or sharp. I'll go out with Ezra, and why do I stop to pee in the grass - and he come to the window, head and shoulder shape looking out my window, and I scramble up my pants and take off - does he see - with Ezra to the park. And come in, running bathwater, to fetch from the closet - oh! body there in the dark, meeting at the closet door, do you think I came to claim you, bodies confront, my right arm opens the door and takes out, by feel, the cotton thing. 24 I wanted to change but when I was in actual new feeling and knowing and seeing I was in terror that I was abandoning the one I had been until then. I said I was terrified that I would cause my own death. I saw that the one who was afraid was not the whole one: it was the new one. And she had died.
May 1st Saturna. Up the path Monday carefully puffing, come to the bench stone on the path, sitting listening, birds on the other side of the bend, undisturbed, looking around, at the slope ahead of my eyes, after a time eye slides, she standing where the path comes round, the rock amah - in Chinese jacket purple pantaloons cotton slippers white socks, with hands braced on knees - slender traveler with keen face - sitting next on the way-rock kindly talking about his book - soup vegetables cooked mussels ready in water. 5 Even my nose is fat. Lying down, sore feet - flashes at the cervix, maybe. Sore bashing when he turns. Leg like the worst log legs of stupid poor people. 18 Clean house, enough cups, washed windows, phlox, pot luck, usual afternoon sound. She's big and strong with large strong waves coming off her head. [midwife J is paying for] J neat and slim in clean clothes. "I'm afraid I won't be there." Her body's lovely and I don't feel it, but old despair it won't feel me if I do. 20 She says a helpless longing to be with me. I say I'll come. Ezra stays outside. It is a strange feeling. She likes her house. At mine Michael comes crying from a dream, sore heart. We've been on a path together, the three of us, he to some others, he doesn't understand why there have to be three fathers. I know I'm going to let myself be soft with him this time. Hold his hand when he cries. Though in fright that it will be trouble with her. I'm going to hold him too, because this isn't the time to forbid. What do I want. To rest. It isn't love, though looking at him was. I tell her and she looks like she'll bolt. We pack and cry. She says she shouldn't be there for the birth. I'll have it alone, maybe I'll die, probably I won't. Then it will be a clutch, just me and him. Or I'll see who turns up.
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