| edged out 3 part 1 - 1982 july | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
7 July 1982
In front of a mirror seeing what I'm showing her, the thing's fat lips opening in small flesh jerks. She's doing that worst sticking it in and out flabby hoping it will stiffen. She says she's unable because there's something in Alberta and when that's gone she'll be better. What D's doing seemed obscene when I saw Betsy in that pale blue femme outfit with unathletic spread in it. She had a hive of hair. Her girl has a pig face. Jean what's the matter with you maundering. The Women's Book Store woman in grey overalls looked keen. Peace in the city. Daphne's imagining something. A beat of blur of wings / woman veiled / beating on the glass in the taxi. What the writing was like, in audience. I turned off my eyes. Belly drive monotonous seduction voice. D talking only to the pigeons in a clean young voice. What's the matter with them is some process of disintegration maturity. T doesn't have it, J didn't last night though with me in the last time she did, Jan almost doesn't. Watching people stiff in my gaze let loose when they're turned to the next one. In this writing I'm feeling the mincing. Salt is it quite well. "Why should they learn the garbage that's making us old!" She can't stand it.
8 To be flamed up in a true way, not wasteful or distorted, for the good of all, according in the free will of all, without harm to body, I dissolve and release the forms of doubt and misery we have created. "You can go free" it said next. - Consequence: she visited T, my face flamed. I was not deranged. The cat's crying. Going for the key. Why she had to bring Ezra, walking, on this visit. She stayed so long. Trapline is steel silver blue-green tension. They're forced to be alone. I was full of their tension. My neck ached after. The beauty of the moment when it was over no sound no image full silence going on they couldn't know it was over, it had been over so many times. I'm alone now. How is it. It's true. How that happened. The images of field and field or field and pasture meeting down the centre-line. The imagination refers to itself. Local writing and pictures. Powers seen as glamour. The screen. Yes she did smoke and T didn't want to say. Thought it would be early morning, it was sooner, tree in the solar, sleep thinking, under, but the thought that released the tree, like, lying in the afternoon when I thought I heard Ezra's nails, the flash of (fear) in the belly (not solar), was, she is brutal like that when she's in love, then lying with the pain, solar, chest; coming was boxer's punches, four quick, out. (Al Morrison, "I loved his horse," around the corner from you.) The apple green cotton dress, apples on it. That anyone listening into language, eyes, eyebrows, forehead, micromovements at the rhythm of the speaker, in babies 6 months old, usually symmetrical. In dyslexics and autistics a time delay right to left or the other way (would be why different eye size). My forehead deadness, paddedness. Covering the forehead. An autistic will spill a cup reacting (to what was said) after a delay. Depression. Nerve connector juice low, gets more by exercise or abstract thinking. Was wondering when I meet somebody why the connections for them don't jump up. A chocolate cake, another flatter one, expecting someone but who comes is, someone, (---), then Carmichael, tall pale says he was skiing, with a dog, red, blue, brown and white, with lines of pattern on his coat, I don't remember who the other people were but I knew them from different times, an old woman, someone touching my head in a way I didn't expect from them, loving feeling, the old woman was once, I seem to be grasping a relation, on the edge of a lake, the nanny or governess of, Jane Howell's sister, I say, she's very old and this is across amnesis, mine too, "Did you ever know someone called Jane," I search for the word, "Howell," she says "She electrocuted herself in the bath." I think that was her sister, the one with me is indicating something, but there may be something I don't know, the old woman's going to faint, tumbles down onto a mattress, I have to tell her, "There's a daughter, her name is Olivia, and she has a son, his name is Michael," as if the reunion is there. Olivia slim and straight, small, bright, eagerly "We could go across and look at the (palisades, cliffs), or to --- or ---." A young girl's face very dark, sharp, as if O's daughter, possibly. In a basement with --- (M?) sort mulberries, going to see what mulberries are, like big (orange size) blueberries, but it's more vegetables, and though I'm supposed to pick out the mulberries I sort the vegetables, corn too, a part-peeled kind of cucumber or zucchini, don't have enough containers, the supervisor says the men (who can) will laugh, but. I go upstairs looking for ---, an empty room, was going to say television set, but it seems more, a play of colors, out the window? Here it's as if related to (the position) the other dream. Going down, not finding the corridor where I thought, but the orphan girl gladly leading me, rooms with empty hospital beds made up in tan sheets, to the home she's been given, a room with one hospital bed, on it a tray of food. Jan's film, Paula, Jeannie. The Saturday of going to Granville Island on the bike, nearer to weeds, the seawall swerves, in the market like a Russian visitor turning around in the heavenly cherries raspberries nectarines raw fish. - White neon cube 10x10, swirls of some faint color in the white. This morning Sunday early waking from a small voice my own stating opposites to what I'm used to thinking. I couldn't get more than that - Today in the garden inspired, fighting with Diana allows it, to have will and invention in the garden, opening the pool, making a fan of good bricks, beginning the concrete table, setting in the beautiful wooly thyme, white-flowering skullcap, rose geranium, valerian where I can see them, moss and sweet violet under the bamboo, the mountain stone, good king henry, where they are in eye line to the pool, the reflections, water poplar and bamboo. Working pleasure but then together with and now more, pain, quarrel, wrote Luke and Chisholm's babble in red envelope, what pain is it, couldn't look at that journal today. I have been long slave in apprehension jealousy envy lowliness bitterness poverty. Hm Daphne unwilling. Having spited C and let her go away without seeing her. Spited D as much as I could. Dropping J. T keeps near. Jan somewhere. What's picture - work - in the blue journal remembering, a few days remarkably recovering and then summoning the liquefied thinking from then.
[Henri Corbin, probably]
A suspicion that being brave and acting as if it is not serious, will reveal that it was false information. However it is not possible to pass from one to the other without a break. This is pointed out by many reports. One starts out but at some point there is a breakdown of the geographical coordinates found on our maps. The traveler is not aware of it at that moment. He realizes it after. "The discipline and axial arrangement that guarantee the vision of imagination." And how else. What can imagination do. In the quiet of evening I was first to concentrate on stillness, desire the fulfillment of my need, and thirdly to imagine it fulfilled. In order to enter the stillness it is necessary to raise one's intelligence to a higher degree of consciousness. When achieved it is a lucid work of intense activity which clarifies the desire and creates efficiency. Mine is never a case of possession. I am the secretary. [Geraldine Cummins] - [notes on optical printer tests with slides] It looks like - image wells up out of white, truck, ff - ff sweet tent, hold ff - ff bird shadow hold, fierce burn out, fierce darken through, again burn up, again fierce to black, slower up to hold, ff - ff fire slowly to light, slowly down to opt, hold ff - ff bridge slowly f white to still pale and let eye continue ff - ff post at hold and slightly char.
1. the truck/tent/bird/fire are information. When I came to this place I stood in grass, watched it come 2. bridge/post are the next story 3. dresser them, long crazy 4. photographs 5. autumn footage reading - Small mixed message, my envelope, anger, toy, bitter, handful of peapods, love, joke (did I miss the writing in them, my page, sleek rhythm, hers, broken up, public'd, recalling. The timbered structure quite spreading over the sea front slope. Commentary, information, wandering. Lying down in the ---, or showing it, like Japanese public baths from above, tub cells, tile, a young girl's breast, looking, we all need to be able to see young girl's breasts, it was built by a MS poster, showing the eyrie (coming ashore, a man and his wife, built path up through rocks), in a room with family, girl and boy, mother, father, their livelihood crafts, display of sandals, three circle tables, looking for just the kind, the boy doing something, I'm just there talking with him a little, "... I have things to do," before I go there's one thing, I start to describe the sandal problem, "My left foot is two sizes bigger than my right," he's looking across the room as if to the telephone, I say offended "Never mind" and leave, across the court, past doors into long vegetable gardens, think he's following, up to a window wall, he isn't following, knows this is a dead end and I'll have to back-track, but a stairwell on the right, wash basin in the mirror wall, have to fold back the mirrors across the stairs, but at the top, am looking at a baby asleep in a crib in a dark hall. Retreat. The hanging about family / Carmichael's / the architecture. The reason I'm staring at people's teeth, is it that they're looking at my missing one and we've made a tooth fix. What I'd got to with R.
Before that from young
With them
With J
I've been betting on sincerity or the image of it and am in doubt whether it's still true or working. Now here's something - the beautiful soul. Any phrase contains the coordinates of its place - that's not quite. She said "That writing is the cube, that fissures and still stands together." The groundhog too smoothed out, why did it have to be in, the poppy-eating head that erupts from porchfloor south. (She'd built chimneys around them.) The first summer. The question is, is there still an outside. The slides show: a staring school alone in the land. A staring truck to the eyes in grass. A view from further back than the door. a view from behind a shadow flying. A view of veined sky, in the shadow. The photographer veiled to show only what she sees. A bone and its shadow in ashed ground and water. Flame rearing to see itself in the mirror. The second summer. Was dumb and in paradise and in pain. Thank you. Window zooming up. Hey. But not - it's her beautiful head. It's white delight. The strong inspiration of the garden work. Ripping up the ugly stuff dangled into the water. The very small 4-corner iris. Grass will go where it should be in this mucky bog length, moss, rocks, humping pitchers of soil under the moss there from Sunday. The betony for now next to papyrus raised in a circle. Rich moist: the valerian, the spade leaf, room for something else, but this iris -. Rip out the ragged things on the other side. Clear round the rosemary. Throw back the rocks. That will be for the iris. All in there. And the other one. Lifted, it's dust dry, hardly rooted. Dipp't some lower poplar now lights from both sides, should close it darker. And the mace yarrow's same green. Canted brick curve. Concrete table. You don't at all gush. Put your hand there. Rubrubrub. "That's for Ezra." "Oh in that case." Kiss neck? Licklick. Why's the chopper. Rain pour. Thumps, from where, wall bounced, from the west sky. Walking out toward it. Yellow lightning shakes from further back than the towers. Had thought of fireworks but, 9th of July after 10, why - 14th - Bastille. It looked and sounded like Beirut. I stood against a lamp post at the natural height of land, changed for a tree, heavy drops jogged, they grow to the shape of trees, the fast start, then long hold, then braked trail'd droop. One white flare sperming zigzag climbing. More! And more! Boom. Line burst. White star points. Boom again in the middle of it dying. Burst enclosed in its belly. Green star points dying out through. Came home. Cocoa at the stove, boiled over (for you my old one) while I stood under the porch light looking. It is and it isn't. What do I know today. The blinding fine white yellow headlights rising on the slick. That the first version is one and true, the revised is false, anxious, opportunistic, narrow, and that there can be a version come from them both. I told her on the bench in the $2.75 dinner place. Orange sweater, in it body feels thin ribs but doesn't look it, and pink pants. The bomber jacket if I turn the ragged cuffs in under the sleeve. Why am I explaining to the future, I used to, and am - "wondering about the return" - "blinded by seeing your reflection" - "I wondered if the faint wasn't about what happened earlier." Working with many of my ages. She said she was wanting cigarettes. The young poet. The only one awake. It was the paper boy's bicycle. "It came true." Stones in a furrow. - Is elephant the placenta! From the cord. [*sketch] And Michelangelo and swaying size. Female grove of the Sara tribe. One round pot on another. In front of it a mother and child. A bush fire. An elephant placenta / mother and child. A mid-grown child and a round pot. A mother and baby with round pot. A female grave, two round pots on tripod. Delight thinking of god as placenta. Religion the safety of accomplished worship of fertility within the father worship. The placenta is part of - the one becomes two, within one / which is one within one / the mirror reflection is again placenta. I feel a homecoming light. The reenacting. That there is a true worship going on.
What about the commentary. Information. What about. For the rest there are meanings and explanation, background, and I don't know about them. I like some of the phrases and sequences.
[Laiwan] The pool under memory the ruby matrix. (Crouches) Angela Kaija. It is self-conscious freedom, which is at one with itself, and has not set aside the opposition it involves. The life of the mind is not one that shuns death, and keeps clear of destruction; it endures death and in death maintains its being. It only wins to its truth when it finds itself utterly torn asunder. Mind is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and dwelling with it. This dwelling beside it is the magic power that converts the negative into being. [Hegel]
What's around the hole is body, brown, thick, fleshy, veins swollen on the backs of hands, woman's condition and the mother, loathed, pushing, avid, a coma, watery flesh full of them the heavy worms After birth seeing the placenta, the surprise of, the gnarled, heavily veined big hefty meaty. I thought of it as my organ. The afterbirth lets go. Red and blue bulging.
They hold up the placenta so the child can see it (for second sight). He was designing a dome. Before he died he made for his child a truck in the children's room. It's too big. The book. In the back pages of his weather calculations / the dome is the cab. The story in pictures of their coming, they were migrant workers / the apple orchard blooming / they settled / Fruitland / a row of dahlias, other, the wall - why can't I feel through this wall the other rows of - which are imaginary - go round in the corridor to see whether it continues on the other side - white plasterboard and flat carpet - I'll leave - before they come back - am I dripping - hear them coming - I'm out, there's a tall blur - now it's down one and straight ahead - ! - door opens hung with brocade smoking jackets - close it - go around - try the same thing again - Anne and Harvey's - into the inside - the others have trailed me in - two couples - to the men "Are you mad at me?" - "Not now. Having seen who you are" - the woman in the bathtub says something, "It's not very ---, there isn't --- in it" - "What?" - --- - "Eternity! I don't agree, to want a bath and to go out into the corridor and put your hand on a door and the knob turns and you go in and have a bath, it's very ---."
Place. Local writing and pictures. Local in part. -
Navigation by spatial sense. Unconscious keeps track. The eerie state. "While conscious of actual surroundings is also conscious of the presence of fairies." Right hemisphere loves complexity - is got to by slow intense observation, "causes the shift." The stages Who (voice) Super and after Eye accustom
Development The slightest indications If it begins with collapse and return of light in the printer
Frog song oscilloscope When it has gone deep into untalk, to bring the quality of a talk out of it Navigation with reference to start and destination by feeling where one is in it First part bleached green a ghost is visiting the homestead A spirit battle with a father Summer red and black children a mouse The kindled image feels the smallest flare
They slide through the exposures slide them through A liminal beating wheatfield the grass came toward me in waves
A night piece
[mine but transcribed from 1978 in the Olson house, mushrooms] (about 5)
Acute place the acute farmland the sense of acute farmland Images at intervals
Apple-tree island
In movies, the detail of flux, which is to say, flux. Stilling to get through the perceived to what perceives
It's already live and already bright, picks up tiny lines of vibration. It registers exquisitely the smallest breathing shift of your thigh as fluctuation of brightness.
The values derived from work in science values on truth Impersonate the mute there is
A physical energy system weak universe Is enfolded within the implicate order The unfolding Concrete sensory-motor Subtle concrete operational - implicit orders to change consciousness Causal formal operational - pure creativity - more powerful Supercausal 15 reversibility - trace back to source and then repeat at liberty - from weak energy of physical to insight intelligence Sit down before the fact like a little child Follow nature to whatever abyss she will lead you -
Difficulty to match Sound is low / hiss [logging audio tape] I'm haunted now, doubt, that I'm standing in the wrong way, T's intention, her vision trying to get in, those who interrupt / that I am wrong to - she was pressuring - "You're a baby!" - what she's doing is getting me to yell at her - I thought oh no not you - what I have to find is my own doubt - consider whether it can be read - told about refusing to go. I could hardly bear to see the quality of those colors / focus. There is another way to stand in the process.
In the system, enlarged by putting other (biological) views into it, or is there another way to enlarge it from center out. If we were parting for life it would be like this, smile, but blind, and already gone, would it. You're going through war to your family. We know there'll be no turning around. Begin to see each other again. And some loving. It was my young manhood. Inner snarl. I don't shout. You don't know what's happening, not at all, you know nothing of what it was and is, six big white translucent eggs piled on raw chicken in a tissue plastic bag, six green apples in brown paper. Mallow flowers and two daisies, a check. Having no idea that this is not when I need money. Or what you did. You're being noble. Your accounting. "Oh it would put me into turmoil." "But since you're in turmoil," leaning cheek on bathtub edge, "I don't want there to be anyone else in me. I want to be alone in this work." What the micromovements mean - both are equally beating? Paul asked if the speed of sound - who one's with - vision - not being able to stand - the job (depends on) being willing to - speak in that way - kill the tree if told. What's T's pole - to remember it - as I felt it not as she / but that's added / pretends and fails it / as I imagined it / is a true simple penetration / not thought about, gone to. Stories and pictures The blue lines. Close. Then rotates to a distance enough to see ghosts. Prologue bridge. 1. light comes slowly on, subsides
2. When I came to this place I stood in grass, watched it come toward me in waves, and thought about description.
3. The pole and a little ritual reading 4. the dresser - or single at a distance - what about when I came to this maybe as subtitles would be better - could be subtitles at side - over conversation with M - Jesus overlay - there could be the wild old bones story over She wasn't home. She had some pictures of her children displayed in the living room. I took down the ones that were of me and burned them. How much of that conversation and whether to edit it, and how. 5. 1978 photographs 6. moon film, subtitles of Kawabata - on the track that writing - the light flashed across - the headlights - the last of the light 7. the slides of then The field evaporating over scribble. I could use the waves in field to program exposure. The world where this film is already made The waves of intelligence in a conversation Blue lines - barley field - letters - heartbeat - moon - edges pulse - the blast of wind - when it moves it's about movement - the sun on tree earth moving - every event in its own mode. My bicycle left somewhere when I went in to (Jan's) building - I've gone around from outside, third floor stairwell, looking in the corridors - around again - hurriedly before waking I remember how to find it, go to third floor landing from inside - in a room with friends, swinging? to the ceiling, from being pathetic some rise into being free and liked. Brought a dip from earlier, just that much, no more cd, of saying I've been getting crazier (looking into a room from above), more lone. - What day - Tuesday - 7 hours away with R, after saying it was gone. What was this day. The first line feeling from thunder to scent. Stretching twining music. Clean clothes red necklace. Finish it look up. Is there someone else. But not expecting. First moment (I talk like that now because if they do, it must be - ) not careful, familiar, bang in (it works only when I'm not as I'd like to be), s-m-i-l-e, that false smile going fast and deep, pleasantness spreads behind it (sorry))(and: she's not true enough to be with, wouldn't've done that, she would wait)(saying what's the familiar implicit) but WAS THAT him? the face quickly checking back and forth, I'm already refusing to look and angry he finds them better looking, but still looking how he's familiar, narrow head, Updike, looking when the eyes are crossing, their paleness. He leaves. When, after the meal, does it come to me, that maybe, with his hair cut. The passport photo? And I was between them two. And will never again. And what kind of time is this. The face thin sensitive and mean or miserable from not speaking. That I'd be in the conceit of that writing and then too obtuse to see. Might not have been. No he's more humor and sweetness. Was.
I was writing, looked up and saw the live fire of the yellow raincoat hung on the balustrade post at the west window. The first sun. In the puzzle of what this day's intention was, I sang at it, thinking it wouldn't work that way, crudely, but singing whatever it would be, invitation prefigure or acknowledgement of the fire of the raincoat. To you: that I can't know you well enough to believe I merit to be with you. 21 That is my fantasy. The whole actual is a foreign continent. Your fantasy, susceptibility, our daughter's eyelashes, bring it to you, and you'll share a house with, and this time I won't be there, maybe then the true part will be all that's left. What is there to know about this day - it's second day of period. Moon, in dark? I think. I was something I thought might be worried about her - on the basement the heart-cutting familiar boots - here objects again - what do they have in them - the newspaper, I see the success of her enterprise at the group, she becomes trusted, they're giving her what she wants, like Mao, she's building where she is. By steady presence, I am away talking to myself, she knows none of me, the writing she's got my rhythm in, without ever having loved or seen it! She's referring to our future, from fantasy, from her notion, knowing nothing about how I hear it. The worst will be if I take this shut-down with me, from her. That'll be her win.
Apart from romance what was it. The sky apricot ever. In eating noticing I was almost unconscious not interested, only in the salad bit squares, soy sauce almost purple cabbage. Ezra not interested, but in her. Coming home backpack hat belly worst hanging jaw. Speaking of the faculty pictures. Who! Could have been. And without ground speaking as if with ground, to an unknown person, as unknown, slid away. I'm also wondering if I've switched across to that un-self-knowing was hers. In bed: that this time not saying is return to a kind of time when I'm bright and inward and that it's (for) work. Dream in my big house I could be a landlady, rent to men students. Graduate students, would be out, for 350 a month, the switch in the long east living room, sparking, I leave it on watch it, flares up white fire like arc welding. It can't be stopped but from behind, the two of us unwinding 4 bolts, by hand without fear, take the thing off. But there'd be the furniture, they'd all need proper beds, it would cost so much to set up. Hello now Ghost up the back of the throat curve into the palate light Head pressures brightening I wrote on Sailing sailing sayling away (Ton frere) adieu not' petit-e tabl-e Sail on through the sad it has gone on Nasturtiums Môrr of the field
Môrr 22 Wanting different. Wanted to be seen true real. Wanted you to know, wanted to know, want magic occurrence, want only as much as is magic event. Frenzy's already here, I'm tearing through the leaves Ophruoeis! yelling No more husband I want music now T said high pressure.
|