| edged out 4 part 4 - 1983 january-february | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
January 19 1983 What about - confirmation - write down "even the pre-Islamic Arab poems begin with the discovery of an abandoned camp" - "multiplying the tale's shimmer and reverberation" - dream of having found in my own place an intuition they had in theirs - accounts of forms, and then attractions - I feel they're different orders - 'influence,' that something is around, and attraction, that I need it - picking forms, I'm glad if I feel for something uncommon, I'm sorry what I love isn't loved - having to see taste getting used to what it wasn't attracted by - hating the styles of painting - hating modern art and loving suddenly starting-up feeling, loving to be loving, a film to make, black with something put together in just a few parts of color, the way the images in the corrider, a lance down [sketch] that blue-violet. Red and yellow ochre, terra verde, lampblack and white of lime on plaster over rock, lime plaster, glue tempera An (underground) show of films, black and white, they're shot at night, have grass (other things) in the dark. I feel something during them, a ritual ('Tantric') I've put myself in front centre to. am moving, moved, throughout and toward the end into postures. The final is a back bend with weight of the outer edges of the hands, last two fingers. [sketch] I've been unusually tuned to the meaning of what's happened, haven't noticed anyone during, but after, think they've maybe been seeing seach other. Madeleine is envious of my centrality as if I had been the celebrant, she hadn't been able. "You were ovulating" she says, I agree I might have been (actually no). Being up north, a woman who lives in a little house, ugly she says too. Will I go back to my place - telling M I miss Jam. Thought in this one I've lost, wondering whether missing J indicates an affair with Janeen wasn't serious. More. Wake wanting to look at it, earlier and better than used. Breakfast idea and letters interfered. Sun for a moment. The writings Handed down: how writing's done, refound. Afternoon sleep. With Luke away from 'London,' are the six weeks up. Outside the cleared-away stand of poplars can see the outhouse through. Standing back to back Luke and I wind our arms and touch our palms together, unwind them, rewind them in the other order. [sketch] Our palms' touch. The way 'birth' and 'death' are used when they aren't exact - birth of a star.
[sketch of daylight ellipse of the year] Pointing in a fixed direction with respect to the stars
- Manuscripts found in large pottery jars Mind in body - The mind to be called by the word in order that the bondage of the power of the spirit may be saved from the frightful water -
She's cold, goes to the boat for something, into the water to swim up the channel. Will we while she's gone. The hairs around the nipple, I've forgotten to pull them. They're thick black. When I pull one by hand it's a little feather. I pluck them all as he watches, hidden pain of shame, despair. He does invite me still. I hesitate, jump in his sleeping bag, a sparkle of last minute hope. He says get on top. It's three strokes only and wilts out when I see the sail. She in a brown dress. He's jumped up to meet her, her face in a light, why does she look so triumphant. He touching her thin calf, she's in high heels. While she's saying to him happily "You don't know ---, I've had amniocentesis, they put a needle up in ---," I'm lying behind them on the platform seeing his hand on her leg. And I may even have been fertile (it's some days since the end of my period, I'm calculating in actual), how can I have been so foolish, for that collapsed nothing. What will I do now while he makes real love to her, is there anywhere I can go. Woke miserable. Gathered up directions to think about it. Tony's letter, his daughter, its tone, why did I write him foolishing, what didn't I gather when I read yesterday's. 'My unconscious.' Sink below. Am I begging men. Is it desperate in my hanging onto J. Is that J's desperation. Why she no longer. Is my intelligence gone because I don't give it what it asks. Is it so for them. They don't seem to be masculinized as I worry I am. Then thought I could take my worry in hand. No don't fantasize him, it'll confused the uncon. The Italian girl wearing fluffy white sweater, her breasts in, family baby, being her boyfriend, looking after her to give her wonderful pleasure. Touching around the breasts until she feels them want me to. Kiss the tips of the nipples, touch the round the breasts with palms, hold and just touch, lick just the tips of the nipples, give her the perfect delight, friendly. I was grateful to him, I'd tell him, "I'm grateful to you," forthright, open-hearted. When she wants later I'll touch her vulva exquisitely, the tip of the finger in, so she's in perfect confidence and gladness. She'll have perfect pleasure when she wants, she can be on a steady centre as she walks around clear-eyed, she doesn't have to be silly. Later when she knows she wants, she'll ask to have it in. Then we'll find out her fertility, I'll show her the research. She'll read too, and when we know enough one day we'll put it in for her, she'll have a blooming look as she's moving behind the meat counter. Designed to protect the organization Needing to believe in justice and order In the debate with M wanting to know whether there is a If ego is quite a small mechanism - I'm trying to see - it does only one thing - say I'm the best here - and for that, cut off perception - because perception cut off it is not the best and knows it isn't. If perception's got back ego is frightened. Replacing ego by seeing. Is it a question of capacity. In my dreams artists have been saying that what they do is learn to ride in the mood.
Clear and transparent a deep saturated blue Scattering centres the molecules themselves Between two showers a wedge of high-pressure, air very transparent, foreground clear in color and shadow, distances blue purple. In the high air it scatters less - sky is blue-black, sun and moon white. Lion-like and androgenous with a great authority within herself and not knowing whence s/he came Clear and transparent a deep and saturated blue Scattering centres the molecules themselves Noticeable brightness in a layer many miles deep The arena of blue-violet, a long path through the air We feel in the baby such utter concentration, such astonishment, such depth of curiosity The consciousness that's interested in everything to do with being a consciousness
You begin to know the implications, you begin to know what is behind what you used to know Am I wrong in thinking everyone wants that, and only a few do. And if that is so what is it about those few, and what is their relation to the rest. Or, is what I think and give still to be mixed with other effect to really be it. (What it's mixed with is conceit, and that is just the puzzle: how to sort the differences from other people, why do they seem to have to be stupid, am I as stupid as that and not knowing it, is it really a difference in capacity, do I simply misunderstand a normal incapacity, or is there something wrong that I could help fix. It is a basic uncertainty that should have been sorted out in childhood but that goes on undermining.)
About M - find something different to do. T far corner of eye not looked at walking into wind fresh small face leading. A fresh cheek. Devoured all the peas at Brighton and 6th, 5th floor. Under the paint on the bannister TRUDY. All the Jewish kids would walk on the edge of the sidewalk past the blacks at the corner store, drunk. The park cement, chainlink, benches by the basketball court, they could see the boardwalk.
At Honey's table twitching, what's she doing, as often is she contempting. That twitch continues to be there in between the unusual kiddish laughing I like hearing us in. I thought of funny things, they came to me. Nervous moments pulling up into some saying. (At Roy's the nonsense I heard myself.) Like to make her laugh, that's her. She's greedy and that's why so strict. They're looking at me this day, and why. I forget to be able to say. Then the story of the library books turns it. The mass psychology of fascism. Universal News and Gifts. "It's in this block," positively, getting off the bus and walking in the black, slick storefront lights, cafes, from beyond her, listening to the tone, positive, but it isn't in this block, in the next, "Where is it?" It's there. The dim windows boarded and tile couloir. Tailoring Co. Swing doors into the big spread. With her at the far end looking in Vogue I have the the nerve to look at the Hustler magazines. I would take her to the MacMillan. She was there, she flipped. "What do you mean you flipped." "I went on the trip." Outside inside. "Who did you go with." "I think Cheryl." I could see her dazzling newness standing in it. Roseanne taking her hand out of her ski jacket pocket with the budgie in it. She told her folks it died. "They were never married. I thought we were going to be rich but we weren't rich." Split-level house like television. "It wasn't a house, it was a two family." She didn't like him. He was willing to take the children. The simple independence and clarity of lying to one's parents. What would I say. Moving the viewpoint to change the mind. Look out at something. In a bed with someone whose back's turned. We're crowed by too many of the children, everyone has to sleep in this one bed. A room where I live with Liz, Catharine, Luke, (Ezra?). Small one lying down hasn't moved, is it dead, asks for more fire under, I didn't bathe it though I said. (Am I the father of Liz's Luke.) The dark and filledness of that room.
Going into a mind and speaking in it - speaking unusually - describing - leaving it to another world to read it differently there. A world is - I mean the sense of being in a different - what it was like in acid. Remembered how it had been and knew itself with other kinds of things to see, the wall's pictures moving, someone else there I knew I couldn't To leave home Hated differences The day violets under trees without leaves low angle spring sun thin smoke near the ground The day violets and thin flames, spring day light a haze of smoke crawling between the poplars Ave verum corpus, Suderman Mozart. What it brings me to is so breath-stopped a time, the surrounding perfection of a moment of their culture. Holy Sunday garden, lunch table pickle, peaceful rule, dahlias near the nut trees.
25th
- The window into ground - Falling asleep talking to the woman doing the books, small desk size of a lectern she was sitting at, booking. A type of American 50-something thin lip dry hair money woman. This is who does my bookings? I don't like it - swift move to a mood where I can't see her, ie awake. G saying what we take to be optical illusions will be standards for all seeing. "It is blasphemy to say there is optical illusion." Singularly the world of the eye. This elsewhere participates in the world of information or imagery representation. If the embryo's learning is dreamed ever after as 'feeling' about the world. A projector that could have a rectangle size of the wall and suddenly narrow it to the size of a concept, double it to recover some other part. The real being is the one who is only there in knowing itself and in managing itself moving among states. As a being it is simple otherness from its states. It exists in knowing and decision. It works with its own states as continuous with the other. It isn't an original or primal unity as such, it is not immediate as a unity. It is one thing only as the process of becoming what it has been. Cell sensitive to the color green: the same cell might be responsive to the orientation of lines at a particular angle, intensity or luminance of lines, how many lines, the spacing between lines, frequency. I was hearing that I could read code just by taking metaphors straight. Matrix of potential experiences is encoded in the frequency domain Things being what they are, things resembling Following something and leaving a precise track
Imago dependent on an adequate relation to his one subject which is recharging his sense of being alive by the panic of something he is killing and which is suffering pain past is actually the thing we keep posing as if it came after the primordial which it can't possibly have done. So we are always emerging in the primordial. Our original harmonies don't disappear as being present, but they are co-present with all the other elements and we have to be attentive throughout. You don't grind rice near a growing rice field. [sketch of square Chinese character] Constellation, the rice measure.
These days - very thirsty - restless - papers - gnaw - not working - waiting - often speaking to no one - eat out - wait for the mail. Na fahng, ho na fa. The woman came around to stand behind and see my feet. "What is it in Chinese? What is it in your language?" Seeing how sweetly he looks. She'd gone behind the curtain to get the tin of peanuts. Sleeping in the day. Going to buy something to eat. From sleeping in the late afternoon, waking in spirit fear. Gnostic star. What am I doing here.
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Rudy at a banquet, says someone's said he's alienated. Someone to another across, indicating how to evade - I say "Do you know what alienated means?" "No." Disputing whether I've done something bad. I'm arguing crossly that it's between one and 'society' (it's not failure). Am in behind benches tucking in my shirt, threading beltloops with tape measure realizing blue silk young women are waiting to sit down in the benches which are in the choir. So I'm edging down the side hoping the belt will be fastened when I'm visible but it isn't and is slipped down I notice to the crease in the bum. Collecting it up. [Dorothy Richardson 1915 Pointed roofs Duckworth] Miriam left the gaslit hall and went slowly upstairs. It begins when she leaves home. The March twilight lay upon the landings but the staircase was almost dark. The color of the light, luminous grey trapeziumm seen from - The top landing was quite dark and silent. It seems description but there's been a move through shades of grey. Coming to the top of a staircase, where she goes when she writies. There was no one about. It would be quiet in her room. One of the ways is to look at the moment coming, as a way to see it when it comes. She could sit by the fire and be quiet and think things over The young woman's own picture. She puts her hand on the door. Eve and Harriet Vowels. With the parcels. Journey. It would never have its old look again. She looks down. The sense of all she was leaving stirred uncontrollably. Slurring and slopping. Pleasure transition surprise. Looking at people. Oh Miriam - what it's like uneasy. Community and being on good terms and I'm an ache - a cup of tea - keeping lively - waiting for money - throat and solar - reading her letter doesn't - "If I have to be contracted in it it's no good to me" - but when I was fighting,
Penetration. Would I like to become am American. [diptich sketch] The key to the synagogue was placed in her hand during labour. Something spills, sacrifice quickly, to appease the spirits. "Hen's head chopped off at the threshold of the house." To prevent miscarriage an egg stone. The read thread everywhere antidemonic. 31st Letters, check, check. The letter I can go simple to. Cat shit. The place in its fur opening and closing. Crawled off the cushion onto the newspaper crying like stomach gurgle ow ow ow. [I find a wounded kitten on the street and bring it home, name it Rabbit] 2nd February Side by side on a window. "Together." Leaving it, ducking, looking back, the snow and blue mountain is not there. On the floor at the book shelf. She's leaving with Sandy! If I look out the window will I see them get into the car, which is not just in front but back in the line. Waiting. See Sandy getting into the back and then surprise a small girl in yellow sleepsuit standing, tall thin woman, pasty, dishwater blond getting into the front seat with her. We weren't together. It was anxious. Books mostly in Russian. Lying on the floor, flipping my waist I can move in jerks along the bookshelves. A while looking it over before I realize I've shock woken before dawn. Cold. Turn up the heat. We go into my room, kissing or holding, I'm risen off my feet into the air. Door opening. We throw each other. My father in and out taking the bucket of not water off the heater. I yell after him that he should knock. I've fallen against the stove. Burnt a bit of a line on my forehead.
A way when I'm talking in generalities. (Who? J-V.) I am actually in an instance. (Sheltering?) The way I make mistakes in facts. Wanting to be the one (Paul, Rho, T) who knows things. The kind of mistake it is, is using clues to support a guess, sometimes about something I might have used to know. Connecting wrongly, it seems carelessly, sentence habit. Being frightened, as when I go to T's door and she doesn't look welcoming. Or imagining the other is offended but not repenting (Carole). Or not being willing to say when I'm impressed, not willing to be under, as when R's voice. And then covering with something I don't want to have said. Going on writing past it. "What comes quickly is old information." I don't know why but it's there inside me, a little excited thing, saying "We're going to change!" It was like I shouldn't come out. If I come out people will see it and I will see it. So I have to not see anything or hear anything, I have to stay confused and not see something. Something is wrong with me. 1. Immediately with back of head, forehead - it would shift - sighs - anger? anger? - a shift, forehead opened sideways like sliding doors - flash fright in belly - jerking, irradiating -
The fine, airy, balanced trees What was swelling along her nerves waiting for like a revelation was a pain not a happiness, what she remembered always was the exultation and the achievement, what she forgot was this difficult birth into a state of mind wich words like ecstasy, illumination, and so on could not describe, because they suggest joy. There was a point at which the thing began. It was not. Then it was inescapable. Nothing could have frightened it away. There was a slow integration during which she and the little animmals and the moving grasses and the sun warmed trees and the slopes of shivering silver mealies and the great dome of blue light and the stones of earth under her feet, became one, shuttered together in a dissolution of dancing atoms. She felt the rivers under the ground forcing themselves painfully along her veins, swelling them out in an unbearable pressure. Her flesh was the earth, and suffered growth like a ferment, and her eyes stared, fixed like the eye of the sun. Not for one second longer could she have bourn it; but then, with a sudden movement forwards, and out, the whole process stopped; and that was the 'moment' which it was impossible to remember afterward. For during that space of time (which was timeless) she understood quite finally her smallness, the unimportance of humanity. In her ears was an inchoate grinding, the great wheels of movement, and it was inhuman, like a blundering rocking movement of a bullock cart; and no part of that sound was Martha's voice. Yet she was part of it, reluctantly allowed to participate. If she understood anything it was that words, here, were like the sound of a baby crying in a whirlwind. For that moment, while space and time kneaded her flesh, she knew futility; that is, what was futile was her own idea of herself and her place in the chaos of matter. What was demanded of her was that she should accept something quite different, it was as if something new was demanding conception, with her flesh as host; as if it were a necessity which she must bring herself to accept, that she should allow herself to dissolve and be formed by that necessity. But it did not last,k the force desisted and left her standing on the road, already trying to reach out after 'the moment' so that she might retain its message from the wasting and creating chaos of darkness. Already the thing was sliding backwards becoming a whole in her mind instead of a process. The memory was chinging so that it was with a nostalgia that she longed to try again. There had been a challenge she had refused but the wave of nostalgia made her angry, she knew it had to be a falsity; for it was a longing for something that never existed, an ecstasy in short. There had been no ecstasy only difficult knowledge. It was as if a beetle had sung. There should be a new word for illumination. Doris Lessing Martha Quest 6th In the night a waking that's just this: "I'm going to die." I, not she; the I am here. Will not be. I was (lying on my back) awake, thin light grey fluid self. "I am going to die." That was myself without reference, from the inside. There'll be a time when I stop. Thrill in the solar. This aft in Martha Quest. At the window in Luke's room looking out. I want to leave here. I want this time ended. I don't want to paint the hall. I want to just leave. 7 Sometimes today a catching back: existence. Night Tide, Old Red and Biscuit. [Clearing out the downstairs landing and painting its skirting boards and doors and the steps and bannister.] The delight of Biscuit and saying biscuit.
Thinking the pain fumes are weakening me against cancer - liking the work - stroke stroke right arm - will be coming through an empty grand room up into a shabby clear-heart house. Crowd around the tangerines table, Taiwan small very brilliant 59 cents a pound, picking energetically through. I'm slower and more easily satisfied, round firm bright ones, don't really have to dig. The woman next to me is rooting through, gets one, puts it in my bag, goes on standing next to me, rooting, choosing, handing to me. I'm grinning. She's doing it for the pleasure. 9 On the bed, that boy who looks like soft mouth Don. I take a flying leap on top of him, he agrees with me, but when I'm feeling his sides and bum he's talking poetry I'm not listening to. Walking away I meet J looking hard. She says "I'm not --- either." 10 J-V and her friend, same loud laughs, 'working', physically alright and somebody. J-V's cricket walk, lightness, soulless. Then what's soul. Holding to - No, first focus. Eatons. My whole shabbiness, umbrella, green pants, fat from these three weeks, hair, torn black dress, socks and now even boots, and I can get new clothes! The beautiful clothes they make for men. Cotton sweaters. Silk sweaters. Low. Lying down. "Al is sending me a letter." Does it mean he's bad-vibed me. What has been happening when I lie down - a jerk out of sleep into fear - instant - as if I'm no one - I don't know, don't remember, just the quality. Writing by dictation "just the quality," heard if before writing and then refused, then accepted, because it's the odd forms that turn out to have spoken through. Worried by low pressure and unclarity. Later remembered - now the sense of it is gone though I have the - it is a fear to do with staying with J and staying here.
Though I knew I must be more or less wrong I don't think I'm in the wrong region. any view of mine, would be that it is in a direction along which one can reach truth. extended the region of mathematical precision backwards towards regions which had been given over to philosophical vagueness Eddington that the laws of physics only seem to be true because of the things we choose to notice. works a theme in the kind of way Beethoven works it gradually free from antagonistic feelings until at the end it emerges triumphant An ego which, unlike ours, was licensed.
The sun was the inhabitant rather than the source of daylight. affliction, powerlessness, waiting, disconnectedness, inertia, the fragmented time of one at others' disposal. You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon-dday; I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first awakes from deep sleep. Whitehead to Russell -
- Can a mother, in patriarchy, represent culture?
"More resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies" She identifies with her daughter but - In order to fight for herself she needs first to have been fought for.
Hetero-ritualized behavior built on polar role definition. Conventional hetero behavior betrays. Polarity, coupling, and role-ing. There is one self of all Flowering to its utmost capacity of wisdom, power, love and universality He is not only himself but is in solidarity with all of his kind. We are in our life and being not only ourselves but all others. You realize everything is being done by something with which you are in conscious union. Simple pure existence 'a light' heart here meaning consciousness We then know who we are, we do not identify ourselves anymore with our personalities. The carat of attention The command centre (of brow) the whole formed by space and stars, as in Einstein's theory A righteous man lives by torah. Torah is water. This world is like a vestibule before the world to come. [several pages on the history of semiology and structuralism] the facts of labour and those of language in whose interplay sexuality finds itself enmeshed This writing seeks to be both sensuous and to exhibit the logic of the signifier the plural writing advocated by Barthes Indoctrination and coercion are the price to pay for recognition as a writer. surge of optimism and selfconfidence the power structure which is both cause and effect of (the accepted hierarchy of topics and languages) an appeal to be recognized as a writer despite the disguise modernity forced the exhibitionistic act of proferring a part of oneself is (compensated) by the actual content his gift for deciphering two messages at once calls on the resources of several language states writing is a general choice of tone, of ethos ethics of form language use compensating for gaps in the system splitting of the object to avoid ambivalence finds fault with the existing state of meaning in the world Works are judged by the awareness they show of the contemporary plight of writing and its true essence. those which he wished he had written "Class position" representation of one's situation in the process of production, decision not to be determined by Fiction and 'the Oedipus complex,' ie displaced love Proust "another mythological example" "since he made his work out of his very preparation for writing" True materialism has in it the potential for becoming a dialectical materialism in which the engagement of idea with matter is realized. the philosophy which is the world-view of slave owners Understanding nature in a way that put it at man's disposal Sarcasm, taking sides, class position - now familiar image of flow and deposit Style and writing were described by means of the same deep metaphor, the gradual deposit and the developing seed. Evocations of 'very ancient' themes as well as fondness for capital letters, show a yearning for essences and origins.
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