| edged out 5 part 4 - 1983 april-may | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
18 April 1983 Morning at 6. What this day was - sad - lost in work. I was easily undermined - I am again easily in doubt - what happened - (have made her) when she is - attractive - I can't stand other - What I've done - the difficulty doing - mistakes - being impressed - being worried - feeling dismayed - "I can't afford to be ordinary" - neck - getting angry - "martyr" - I threw something fast - a wild risk - then confused - don't know whether to act what I feel - her system I'm respecting - "I can't stand people preferring her" - I can't stand when I think I'm discounted and it's my fault because I use the mannerisms of irresponsibility - what I know and the form I know it in - a hesitating unpoised mind - I have fought for metaphor but - beginning to speak - standing with a strong voice on the other side of the pillar - "That's why you don't want to engage with her witch" - I jumped in - "Why are you hanging around" - at the end of the day - now I want not to speak to you, it's too many losses today - why did she set up about the sand - she was my enemy - all today - "I didn't get lost" - "You play at being a workman, I see you walking around being a workman" - the organ in the morning - she is cunning in a way I don't think of - "A domani" - being dry to show I can - dismay - Rhoda coming down the bank putting her hand to my shoulder excited about the angry salmonberry and how they looked in the diamond-shaped windows, the flowers then the berries - "Your zodiac children" - the conference where the chief spotted her - that's where I let myself get impressed. Poking in under them with my hands feeling whether the earth's in the spaces. Yesterday and this morning her praises - then I got suspicious - "Ezra has missed you very much, she's wanted to see you" [Jam says to Rhoda] - can I listen as if it is not at my cost, to know: yes I must. On the bus the flutter when I said it was a pure hopelessness and she said that's not how it is with her - very fast - "I know it's not how it is with you, this is some news I'm telling you," hearing ourselves overheard, feeling pedantic collusive frantic. Talking to Rhoda, and earlier: wanting to be a filmmaker again. Error, foolishness, delusion, inadequacy, vanity, naivety, loss of all friends, subsumption, vacuity, I am brutal with myself as others are, don't notice cavings-in as with that woman, set a physical drive to compete, go. Am I ashamed my lover's body my real lover - though she is suave with me as anyone - isn't joy to touch - in her intoxication I was sober. 19 Night before this one coming down the back stairs of the institution, old woman hanging by her wheelchair from the banister, another further, when I pass she's dislodged, I yell for attendants, no one comes, later see the woman standing, she's alright. In this one it's the desolate dark stairwell at the back of the hospital for old people, it's coming from my car, that wasn't alright. This night coming to and then into the deep pit where garbage is brought. It's got levels, garbage is dumped on floors on the end of it, stacked, what keeps up the weight of them. I duck down in, the young boys are outside, I go to the far corner not to be seen when they come down the path. Old clothes on hangers hung on the sand walls, they are not for me, looking through them, but they could be sold, others down in the excavation are probably gathering things to sell, I sort through too but my limit, it seems Paul is there ahead of me, is when I pick up the woman's torso and fluid is coming from her vagina. Was in the church looking under my hat at the organist, who looked back. I thought he recognized me as the woman working in the garden. 20 Body is sweeter and nearer, womb broke four ways like a solid, across, across, across, across. They go to work in the dark, leave the cars on a narrow track, Sandy come in behind the wheel, I kiss her mouth, oh what did I do, I didn't mean to do that. Daphne and Meilin, did I remember that before, when, was it in March. "She is always changing jobs," "She's alone," [Angela says] holding the photograph of a woman's head. "What's her last name?" "Spinks." "Marilyn?" Was Cox. "Do you know her?" "Of course I know her," thinking what's the of course people say. "I used to babysit for her, she was doing a thesis on Doris Lessing." Sarah and Rachel. Seeing the house first. There her face and voice. "You were in Kingston?" "Yes I was at Queen's." It's all near and fast, George [Bowering] on the scent, J not far away raking grass. "Oh, Ellie!" I know what she's just understood. "She's just put the parts together," to J. "We were at a party and I read your palm." "I remember you but I don't remember what you said." I don't remember her, what I remember is the spot by a lamp, on the west wall, where a blond woman who (Peter) said was nuts, sat all evening. The Cox's pleasure in knowing a poet. That time came up. What I'm feeling when there's a space, questing for a sense of what's the quality of that time come into this one, that it makes this time continuous with that one, which makes London an island behind me. Standing on the raised lawn in evening light after sundown, not quite liking the line. From yesterday when she said "martyr" as I was leaving for the end of the walk and I rode out on the slash that came to me "Just because I limp you think I'm a martyr," then sweeping in shock not hearing all of what she was saying to J, "She'll say anything won't she," feeling it's blown, I've destroyed my - Yesterday as I was planting and fitting toward the last tree and the house, she sitting on the steps not talking, "But I can't speak to her now," with my back to, bringing tea, waiting 'til it's brought, "Would you like to have a hand in planting the last tree? Put your other foot there. Do you need more help?" Him, why's he trying to get in here. "I don't think there's room." Angela's got her hands dirty. When we sit on the steps looking down at - they look alright - in the ditch ankles and hip joints feel like they're going when I pivot the weight of the cement blocks - lying down on her mattress the feeling of sinking into sand - the avenue does look fine, the decisions have been right - going down to sit next to Angela with J beside - a clear moment when we're all facing the same way looking out - I say dispassionately "I've been having doubts about the rose arch, it would close the avenue. They could be there but instead of meeting they could open out." (That's what -.) (He said he likes plums.) Was when she said, to make up for the night before, "Doesn't Ellie remind you of Lyn?" Starting to walk home north, takes my arm - fingers inside her palm in the pocket of the green down vest - the big trees with white flowers, the real trees now not the flowering ornamentals - great loaded avenue trees - walking with them on Pleasant Street - to the ice cream parlour, where we play at telling the story - "Why did you do that?" - when Trudy holds the tree and tilts it to let the earth down and doesn't say "Orientation" the relief of endurance I hadn't known I was - the way it was alright going on working when they were there - hammering the wedges, the stone falls into its place, she cheers - the dark woman with artificial breasts, holding a marigold plant in a paper bag, who came out into her driveway as we were bending over her plants. "There are countries where you'd never be able to do what you're doing." When we keep walking north we find ourselves in powdery last light coming over the rim, with the flowering city and the ships in harbour, on the flat below. "Oh look where we are!" In a schoolyard the two immense trees with leaves like locusts swarming in. Down a long sidewalk along with us, the pleached maples, no, taking down a leaf, brown things, telling the story and she taking the shopping bag so I can, with her pack. We come down into the lighted shopping street. At the bus stop three kisses. "Goodbye Pec coucher." [Bouvard et Pécuchet]
Being attracted to plants, being excited by [George Adams and Olive Whicher The plant between sun and earth] Color, and difference of form They tell of Persephone free And rooted They present themselves to us each in a different way. the feeling of freshness and buoyancy the characteristic gesture It is at rest amid an ocean of circling movements. The inner focus has not yet been claimed. To claim for its natural life and body what it has hitherto left free and open Anschauende Urteilskraft Surface, periphery which seem to be determined from the outside inward Principle of duality: wherever the point, there too the plane. centric forms of thought sends in from distances of space the mathematical statement of spaces the spirit of the new geometry, with its deeper conception of space They have the same kind of sex organs as animals and biennials and many of them do reproduce annually, but others do so only sporadically; they concentrate their efforts toward survival in their roots, often spreading them through the soil to multiply the species. Jack's garden: plume plant, Japanese anemone, mallow, goosehead, loosestrife, astilbe?, goldenrod [instructions for planting paeonies]
26 April Her lack of sense - as not seeing that the blocks could be cut straight - not seeing how the end boards could hold each other - not seeing how the stretcher blocks would make a firm paving - imagining the sand would sink - buying the $25 soil testing kit - and then she says the material isn't prior to the symbolic - but when she says energy does she mean competence - I was set to be the genius but they don't help me be the genius - after I told the birth story the way she looked talking about Akbar, "He likes people like Dostoevsky who are crazy" - "I don't understand why, that isn't the kind of people I like at all" - "You aren't completely reconnected yet" - "It isn't enough to love her you have to understand her" - and this morning - while I just listen she talks more, I'm listening for her to finally say - I'm not crazy enough - talking about lightness and memory, she feeling a weight pushed at her - burden - assumes it's not hers - about the newspaper - she can't do it alone, she doesn't know how to begin - bitterly, I've been had, she doesn't want to do it, she's using that story, that she invited, to - going bad - "When you said you went straight away and had a coil put in that was enough to stop a very strong connection of the bodies, it was really very strong" - her mad ignorance of how it works - inwardly I'm resolved, if she won't do the newspaper that will be it. [notes on English garden photo book] 28 Angela saying her mind is crude / vulgar. "Started me writing. Someone thought up all those voicings." 30 April The brown man who came into the women's washroom, his face, I put my hand on his arm to lead him out, and then keep moving, I like how I do it, put my arms around him, kiss him steadily until he likes it, I knew what I could do, from his look, pressing sweetly onto his heat, he isn't tall, he is just right. 1 May In the end Thor asks Stein only three questions - and it is all over. After that he talks like Stein. Knowledge comes to Max Thor only through Stein and Alissa. She belongs to whoever wants her. She feels whatever they feel. Mathematical symbols. There are constants that apply, no matter what system it uses. The speed of light, simple counting, pi. You don't know, and then when you know I am still doubting you.
Miauo. Calling the cat off the platform, down into the garden dark. The white cat comes replying and looking up, but won't come in. I was calling her to bed, I looking down saying miauo, she very small looking up saying miauo. Placing my feet carefully not to scare her. Carelessness and demanding little Not understanding her - in the phonebox - she crying - weakness - imagined heart attack - when I shouted - feeling she's immobilizing me by another way - "your energy" - your sensitivity - saying I'm not handling her carefully - "You're patient and then you suddenly -."
Sunday night. I'm feeling you. The language of his notice on the signboard. The language of the room for rent card on the noticeboard (outside the post office at the foot of Highgate Hill) The language of the room for rent card I felt a consciousness in --- 1033. His voice was courteous. He said a dancer had seen the room and might be taking it. Address near the callbox, 4 St Albans Road flat #7. The downstairs door and thin carpet on the stairs, a young man with a fat face. There's a white goatskin rug and a stereo table with red velvet hanging to the floor. (Henry the roommate, hook nose, such a dark beaked face.) The room upstairs has a purple wall and bare wood, sees north across roofs (over Highgate Hill to sky moving), is a beautiful long room I want, 6 pounds a week. The room, the smell (that will go on being strange to me) from the kitchen. I go home to my room in the ---'s house on Makepeace. Write ---. I don't remember whether it was one visit or two, meeting Henry, Roy coming out after me to say I should give the rent to him, Henry catching up to me on Highgate Road saying I should give the rent to him, Henry phoning me to say Roy owes him money, I should give the money to him. I having suddenly put the key in my pocket, the upstairs fire escape door key. Roy phones to ask if I have it. I bring Ian to see it in the evening. It's my offer to live together as he said he wanted. He can move his piano. Henry and Roy looking at each other when I say oblivious at the foot of the stairs "I'm dying to -." Ian gnaws me about it later. When Ian and I move in Henry has left. Paddy is in the third room. There is an evening Ian is at school late, Roy, Paddy and I sit on the floor in twilight, I've made coleslaw in sweet cream, listening to Music for Zen Meditation. I'm in bliss of being with someone in that music. The evening light, the long west window which saw to the Heath and was the sunset window, the telephone under it chirruped, being completely present in it, with someone, as Ian could not have been. He must have come in and was that the evening he challenged Roy and Roy, having said he had no designs, still muttered "But of course one always hopes" so that I dreamed he gave me a letter, I love you. Tony Scott 1964 Music for Zen Meditation Polygram Records At first he was seldom home. His coffee cups. We came home hungry, there was curry in a pot, stew beef, chunks unbrowned so the gravy was grey, carrot, raisins. We, Ian, ate a lot. The Sainsbury bags in the kitchen. He wasn't home, he'd be gone all night. He came and went alone, was touchingly alone. His books piled above the stairs, Ian wanting to read them. When I fought with Ian and went to the Heath at night his comprehension seemed to hold me from across the room. His seeing me, seemed the comprehension Ian hadn't got. Thin shoulders in a grey turtleneck going into the kitchen (the smell of piss coming from the kitchen sink) but I seemed not to see him physically, only I was always aware whether he was in or out, I always had to know whether he was home, I'd come in and have to listen (look for his sheepskin coat). We in the purple room were fighting, weeping, posing. Ian left. Phoned. Roy handed me the phone (he didn't work). We met for breakfast. Ian walked up the road, I hardly want to mention him, the one who could be easily left because he was not there. Catastrophe. What he was wasn't interesting, Roy could so easily make himself more interesting to anyone. The sound of a van door sliding open. I felt myself in the north room. And am a green wall, a door. Ian haunted. What was Ian. Good-looking, music, he was a voice I can hear, young. When he talked theory I couldn't stand his mind, when I was happy in a moment he was anxious in it. Jealous of every intimacy he wasn't in. He talked about McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller and I didn't like it. I wanted to love moments as images. When I put on Roy's motorcycle helmet he understood more than I did, that he was out. Playing. That was when he said they must talk about it. Talk you stupid. The other has too much class to discuss it. Roy was seeming to be acquiescing, courteous, waiting for it to be over. Have I remained Ian. Roy's dream of a circus tent with a high pole, flight dance around. "I sing love, love" left open on the table. To the snowman / listening in the snow / who nothing himself beholds the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. Ian begging to be told what it means. I believed I knew and Roy knew. What did Roy know. To win by tricks, not against himself by explanation. my loving people through sharp seas in winter nights doth pass with naked foot stalking in my chamber Calm is the sea; the waves work less and less and seem whatsoever he doth and sayeth to do it without pain, and, as it were, not minding it. And contrariwise to use force giveth a great disgrace and maketh everything to be little esteemed. and thou three-headed Hecate who knowest best the way Published in Dianthus in 1604. "Of the pink family."
Christ pleads his death, and then we live [some anthology of Elizabethan writing? - Raleigh, Wyatt, Earl of Surrey and others]
George Peele 1594. He draws a curtain and discovers Bathsheba. 4th May "I was in your position. I wanted her to be the one, but, as she wasn't, I had to provide it myself" - letters full of quotations - "I almost avoided a terrible mistake" - seedlings - "I have to hide behind the door before she'll come in" - "poetry because I loved it so much" - "her letters were fine" - yesterday breakfast she had prepared to talk about my work - bacon - metaphor, metonymy finally why, finger of speech - the long walk, the amazed light on the beach, the light on the stones on the beach, walking looking together at the white light under storm north, back behind the cottages looking at the old rose's beautiful lines and buds, embracing her, venturing into the private garden, the colors of sand pebbles boulders concrete clay bank in that soft light. Clear. That light really in the surfaces - "I couldn't entirely hide my love for the materials," the other writing impersonated more - this morning in chairs in the sun, one on either side - "at this point I want you to understand that sometimes you really are confused" - chosen to hide - "my family won't confirm me in that" - what I most suspect you of. The babies next to each other wrapped with their person - heads out in the open moving their mouths - struggling their eyelids. "It's the neatest thing a person can do." Came into my room - "I don't believe you want it less than I do" - "there's something in what you say about bluffing, though that isn't the whole of it." Tonight with the window open, night sounds and indoor light, thinking of changing the house. Come downhill over scraped ground across railway lines, highways, right to College Printers, speaking to someone about the --- - "You did good work today" - have I just cancelled it - are you alright - her exhaustion - is it me. Coated and open paper, handfed and web press, half-tone, screen, lines 110,120, red window. That one who returns, when I look sideways at, strange one: I have done nothing to deserve to be with that one. Making me work to get the newspaper - bringing up what I killed - she says - this craziness again, what's it useful for - what does it cover - I wanted it so much - energy - "It would be useful to me, I could use your energy" - "I am a very urbane and civilized creature." What extraordinary thing is she saying / from what fantasy. 1. Why can something be felt for whale / hill / etc that isn't felt for human gen. Whatever a god eats / defeats, he can turn himself into at will, for it's part of his body now. How exciting and precarious, provident and passionate, the sea is;
himself a brilliant transmitter between confusion of tongues between the child and the adult attempted seduction of the other by the means on which the subject has come compliantly to rely - I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges, it's by the nature of his deep inner soul. We're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream. 7th May Afternoon Angela's - yesterday bitten leaves - the short soak looking at her, playing - hardening to say about the mound, that rehearsed. "Duncan is the other one who does this to me." What is it about her. What was wrong with us after. Not being able to kiss, I didn't have a space in me to feel the sight of her, it was saying things I'd thought some other time.
A writing room When she looks out the window what does she see. She sees into a room under two trees. "We fought about the design for the mound." She sees herself crouched
I liked that girl Liminal
The neighbouring farm, Ken Dreidiger's for sale. Going across the small space on the field road, through bush, this is in a SW. House 75,000. I'm the eldest sister, can I raise it to have the land for us. I say yes I can. Then looking at the fields, they're planted in rows of trees, I like that, and then looking at the pig pens. It seems the 75,000 was down payment and I'm committed to four billion mortgage. This in J's front room morning after impersonal touching, after meeting Angela, drinking small amount of champagne, bringing tools to J's. Reptile brain, limbic, survival, fear switches to it. Mammal brain, a second brain was simply folded around the limbic node. Sexual love, aggression. Third brain is the outer eighth inch of brain tissue laid over, neocortex. when my mind catches the mothlike pre-thought hovering at its margins and brings it into being as an idea not to eat meat, or beans, not to touch a white cock, not to look in a mirror beside the light [some of what follows likely from Kepler by way of Koestler's The sleepwalkers] Prophetic intuition supported by the wrong reasons The hearth of the universe, or the central fire. It could never be seen, for the inhabited part of the earth was always turned away from it. Between the earth and the central fire, an invisible planet, an antichton. Beyond this outer shell there was the fiery ether. This outer fire was the second and main source from which the universe drew its light and breath. The sun a transparent window or lens. The counter-earth which also accounted for the faint ashen light on the lunar disc at new moon. Series of identifications They transferred it from outer space to the core of the earth, and the counter earth they simply identified with the moon. They were working at making the universe - it seems. As Phosphoros the morning star, as Hesperos the evening. For nearly two millennia the heliocentred system was forgotten. Began around 600, three centuries of
Among the Pythagoreans, no one could learn further into science who hadn't cleared herself. Vegetarians. Plato Anima Mundi the perfect round being. It had no eyes, for nothing visible was left outside it; nor of hearing, for there was nothing audible outside it; and there was no breath outside it requiring to be inhaled. "A living animal" Aristotle making an outside which moves it. They were the gods inasmuch as they were studied. Folded up against, stretched toward. Chosen ceosan. Robert of Lincoln Invisible planet became epicentre of rotation, crystal wheels the orbits My object here is simply to project the draught of a systemization of Cetology. I am the architect, not the builder. But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post-office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after them; to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan. [Melville Cetology in Moby Dick] Did the luminous figures on the dark ceiling of the world appear as living divinities to the Babylonians and Egyptians, the Twins, the Bear, the Serpent. guardian of doors and gates: the face in front alert and observant, the other, dreamy and glassy-eyed, stares in the opposite direction. Conic cavity in the earth, around whose narrowing slopes the nine hierarchies of devils were arranged in circles, duplicating the nine heavenly spheres; Lucifer, occupying the apex of the cone in the precise centre of the earth. Its centre, once the hearth of Zeus, is now occupied by Hell. 11th
yes dwell - her graceful body worrying in relation to her
butterfl'eye sail it bask plums ride long arcs - Nothing exists or happens in the visible sky that is not sensed in some hidden manner by the faculties of Earth and Nature: these faculties of the spirit here on earth are as much affected as the sky itself. The natural soul of man is not larger in size than a single point, and on this point the form and character of the entire sky is potentially engraved. it moulds his condition. Ie conception / confused with birth reacts to the light coming from the planets according to the angles they form with each other and the geometrical narrowness or disharmonies that result. as does the force of light a force emanating from the sun, which diminishes in ratio with distance substantial in the same manner as we say that light is something substantial meaning by this an insubstantial entity emanating from a substantial body Centre sun because Him god Yet it gives me pleasure to remember how many detours I had to make, along how many walls I had to grope in the darkness of my ignorance until I found the door which lets in the light of truth in such manner did I dream of the truth indeed contained the dreams or germs of most of his later These figures pleased me because they are quantities, that is, something which existed before the skies The ideas of quantities are god himself. But The star messenger could be read in an hour written in a new tersely factual style which no scholar had employed before Lying down in the white room, lying on my back on the floor, in the afternoon, in silver light, is when I'm with the marvel and catch of being going to die. The little cat on the roof with her head laid back so her whiskers were horizontal and against the sun looking at the rain slanting to her. Her motion, ears moving separately scouting the sounds. She creeps up the roof slant, lays herself down, instantly moves again, wraps her tail into sitting pose, moves to follow some thought. "She's so interested in everything." "So interested!" She thinks in movement. his irrepressible indefatigable passionate and precise self The heavenly motions are nothing but a continuous song for several voices (perceived by the intellect, not the ear) When the storm rages and the state is threatened by shipwreck, we can do nothing more noble than to lower the anchor of our peaceful studies into the ground of eternity. We can feel the warmth of the moonlight with the help of an apparatus. For if one gathers the rays of the full moon in a concave parabolical or spherical mirror, then one feels in its focus, where the rays meet, a warm breath, as it were. I noticed that in Linz when I was engaged in other experiments with mirrors, without thinking of the warmth, I involuntarily turned around to see whether someone was breathing on my hand.
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