| edged out 9 part 4 - 1984 july-august | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
27 July 1984 Yesterday the little child hurrying anxious to shit on a piece of paper to please his father, scrabbling to arrange a tee-shirt. I shit a long straight one. Take it in my fingers, lay it down, firm. Today - child minding. The house in disorder. Feeing a cool focus waiting behind the vapours. My body is changed as I wished. Long thin person the old man draw. I want to stare at his thighs, they're what I was after. "A life in them." Yes, that. And then also feeling it will be possible to tell him why I have to look. "I feel like I'm stealing." I'll watch to see if he steals my face. Already yesterday his bare face was slaying me. "Don't smile." Let's keep ourselves from - "Those colors are always there."
Holding steadily to see - to give him a current of endurance - "I want to see it" - going red and breaking. [notes on editing steady attention, which later became notes in origin] 28
- Eddie Eastman Visions not his but perhaps mine - steadier - a light he says - "If they're mine why aren't I having them?" Relief that this time there's less cramp. Noticing the submersed one watching whether this is my husband. Sensation of acting wide-eyed and benign with other people. The kissing not good. "And I'm afraid you won't know what to do, and won't want to learn either." "I feel left out." "Be patient, you won't, I promise. And then you'll have a beautiful body and well trained too." About Nekbii Suffiad - some were disguised as boys - "How brilliant she was in school and how nervous." "I am going to let it burn." "I have to go now," through water. On the street (in Paris) painting under arm through Chinatown wedding party. Going about together I see the others so lovingly it lets me know where T's kindness comes from - she is in this completedness, she's not famished. Nina going through the gardens this morning in a hat. "He has to look at you" cause you're so priddy. As I cross streets on the bike drivers look at me seeing my state. Bare skin everywhere basking gives the town joy. 29 "This house helps us." Teaching elves to read. Slowness. A car - station wagon - let out the clutch it goes though I haven't put it in drive yet - at the meeting some of the young people speaking to me - they want me to talk, want to arrange a place not the school where I'll talk with them. Come in my house from going down there - the hotel - standing at the door with my hand on it hearing papers rustling - the length of the corridor to the light at the fire escape door. Prop my door with a boot, look outside at the yard - is this a message? Or did I dry bud in an ek of the oyster shell. I'm coming in cooing "'E was 'ere" and am on the steps when I look up. Without sound planted on the landing long triangle black and white holding bananas waiting to see me see him. [*sketch] And the so glad meeting. 30
1. What happened yesterday when after he clamped on my breast he went into conniptions? "Ee-ven my tee-eeth" in his little young way. I hold on tight in case he's being born. But worrying whether he's always going to be spastic, like Arnold, leaving me out. 2. He comes to the door naked. The little thing. Acorn. So little. Is it going to be too little? Does it mean he doesn't let himself into it? During the night "I think you've got po-ten-shl." 3. In the tansy nest I dream something I've seen also in a recent night. A Chinese man in a restaurant boot bent over clamping his baby's screams. When I saw it last I vanished by, but this night I know to sit with the man and stroke his hair. "It's alright, it's alright to let the baby scream." He lifts his face. He's crying. The social worker comes, a tall woman offering a game, like Monopoly. I say no he doesn't want that he just needed to understand he can let his baby cry here. 4. J's own-life-write. She knew how to stop and breathe when she had to cry. 5. We were together demonstrating what we've made. 6. Looking closely: "Your one eye looks hurt and the other doesn't look hurt at all." 7. "I knew a beautiful old man once who could look at your eyes and tell you things. He said one eye is your father eye and one eye is your mother eye." 8. The drawings I thought of them. "I don't want to look at them they look so much like the way I draw." Looking to see whether they look different when he's looking too. Shame and whose am I If I can't bring them over in a time when I could bring them to a better life. 4-9 months, 6 max interval
She'll have a much better life here
Revision - (Setting something down to be filled later) 15,000 books "I read the tones"
2. In silence looking at the blue sky 3. When we made the beds and lay down the great cumulous reach out from our footend of the bit-leaf cottonwood into the pale dark blue. I see a star rise from the upper leaves or momentary - really an instant - between leaves in the leafy body. A satellite crosses seriously far away. The thready (alsike - no, sweet clover, the white meliot - white clover standing high into the light from the service road. Breathes. His hand behind my head stroking tansy buttons. 4. "I think you might be bold enough, and your concentration is very good." Oo am I going to bore him being too much of that. Singing no no no no no no no complete and at peace. From his head pushed back: "Sister! Sister!" "You're mis-using your voice!" That in the night waking. 5. Sleeps curled too. 6. So thin. 7. Our two sets of legs flay sideways across the wall under the window. The Elmo corner pink green blue medieval. Knot and rays of lines from the pole on the rise in the alley: in space beside the long edge of the pink: in time dilation. 8. Lithe on the asphalt, girl with her arms in the small of her back. Thin girl with / breasts in her chemise / he sees. 9. From near his chin - looking up a silly imp's nose, flattering smile (whose is ?). It's the left eye's decision. If I shut that one it's a firm sleep, closed mouth, of light long head. Young Harold. Nearer to being my father's hand. 10. Raised mane. Sergei. Wanting distance to make it the steadier face. Peering at bad smiles. 11. Meteor flash "a fast bird" the love time. 12. Then the sun shone longwise into our pit. We heard clack clack stakes driven. Runners on the track. 13. Telling what I found babies were in dreams. "The inner erection." 14. With bedding in our arms we come out on the surveyor's field smiling for the telescopes. We cross the ballfield. We pass the laundry's opened wall. The orthodox church. The angry connection box. The Japanese garden with tink and tomato plants. My own healed garden (the sun did) alongside. He stops for the lilies. And push the free door. 15. "Do you know Germinal? It's by Zola." 16. "When I went out that day I went straight down to the water. I had an image of us hugging each other very hard and being very happy, the way we are now." 31
[sketch] Yesterday thinking he'll leave now - "Even if it's only a week." Impatience coming. I forced it - angry that body can and I can't - alright I let it go for a while but now I'm going to know. And beyond that, to record: the way standing among the piles of fill surrounded by directions of color he suddenly started to tell about his work that day. "At the beginning it was really beautiful." He's so beautiful in the intense light, the life light - his shining color of face, the hat and eyes - sea green - standing. The way with green book in my hand I shot round the corner out of the garden and he was there like a materialization standing still in the alley - the grab of joy that he looks like that and it's me he's come to. "It was my face and then I could see your face in it" - and then wrecked - "It's garbage." 1st August Long blond hair down to here - speed - a wild girl and another one. "She wrote me such beautiful letters. I slept between the two of them, in the morning I got up and left. Drove back home. I didn't think anyone cared where I was. Maybe it was revenge too." Seventeen. In 1972. Telling it in the night crouching by the open sill. Smoking showing me his profile and the Henry Fonda man - the man in the motel - "a farmer-daddy of my childhood" - but in the narrowness of the body - folded back at the knee and flat straight up.
"If I ever start talking about the future send me away for a while, will you?" Said when he was lying next to me he started to lose his memory, "It's dying." That he thinks he could go all the way through. "I know what it is. It's the male and female, it's all ne-ew to me."
- Today: after morning, silver air, birds, cool stir, and he goes home, I sleep a few hours, Trudy creeps out for the letters. Leaning on the wall eating a nectarine; she from the porch. From the bicycle looking. The little films. Julie "I must insist." Laughing. Leslie Seed on the telephone. J didn't sleep in the night, was on the front porch. JG looking beautiful, sulking (how bad a thing did I do) - the small boy offering his sandwich - the carver and the girl reading Castenada - Beverly's face as if rubbed with a cloth - thin M creeps up takes off his hat - in the town it's more circuits - Beverly intersects at the Classical Joint - she's willing to look and he does too - "Seeing Beverly on the street this time made something right in my stomach." In the room - where I want to go though it's not going to be right - the new paragraph - I read by faint light from the alley - aloud - he looks racked - "Jack the Ripper" - "And then when Ruthie had a baby you felt it was yours" - "She felt it too" - then noticing the sound of the fan the height of the streetlight steps in the corridor, telling about Paul Sylvester. - SCREEN / steady attention As if in the body - erotic - hormonal - cellular - An attention as steady as the events Another value of attention - that something is there - the what quickly seen, then you're left with the how - The image isn't a signifier in a concoction It will resemble something in the body's past and present life - action chemical conversion - events in the cell maybe - the amnion's conductivity - currents of new oxygen from the lungs, synaptic flush in the cortex - but it is not symbolic - it is the ---- of erotic feeling in the belly
the sort of writing they are: cursive like being a place - inanimate - feeling the life of - place as in 'instead'
2
"I moved their legs. Jack the Ripper could have learned style from me. I don't know what Jack the Ripper did, did he rape people?" "He murdered people." "Murdered and raped." "He was trying to tell you he knows this hat better than you do." Covering something - his voice when he said it drove them crazy when he talked. "The intelligent child"
Her little prehensile feet stretching on brake and gas. She's laughing. "I'm not the man I used to be!" 3 Touching the way I have, tips in the white skin. Showing how the bull throws his nose up assessing the smell. "You must be in heat the smell is so attractive." I haven't found any enclosures in him - is that true - maybe something about good looks - embarrassment. Evasive smiles. Did you ever murder anyone? As if you could be the vehicle of someone who'd try to strangle me.
"An image every kid in the country could relate to." The craving to look at and be that agreed handsomeness - I'm looking in a way to try and induce it, he slides out - for it to be my one - in fact his seediness doesn't cancel it but then there's the crazed starved old farmer who's gone far past the possibility of attracting fertile girls. "You woke me in such a beautiful way." Under the hall window. I could remember only, something like: a sheet of touch, three places, the fourth remained. Country music. Envy! He knows. 4 "Dance for me." A longing over panic. Fur belly dance. "Changing so fast." Again I'm writing the romantic not the story. - The imagined king above the social structure. Question of what's the fantasy of an outside Him. The planets are magnets. Keppler. Mass. Moles. The squares of the years are as the cubes of the orbits. their beautiful simplicity as practical mathematics. and light is emitted, reflected, refracted, inflected, and heats bodies; and all sensation is excited and propagated along the solid filaments of the nerves. Increase of friction with the slowing down of sliding surfaces! Reaches a maximum while the surfaces are still moving.
[2 more dense pages of CL words] 5
It turned yesterday morning, hot and talking, loving to know I can save it for later. The dictionary work is exhausting. It grips in a getting done will. Later in the aft - cut fringe unbecoming - nothing in this day to get me ready for marvel - I won't be in the right speed to be his creeping inspection - and right away I don't want him there - bowing over - hear myself banging the dishes - telling about the basal temperature drawing lines he doesn't like on his thigh - "This body wants a ba-by!" - not wanting to look at him. Then he doesn't like walking with me or seeing my forehead lines. "A mountain of a scholar." At the edge of the park he's talking with his head on my arm - my hand spread on his shirt back - looking at the sidewalk - the Japanese woman and then the man - I don't recognize - they, he, looking too - see my hand spread on the bum's back, in Oppenheimer Park, my ugly forehead - Zen Centre. He's saying what they do to crazies - in a room doing nothing - "the head is in control" - tears at having been delivered from talking self. And raining today. Thunder. Progesterone higher temp, faster probably (but younger is faster). Ordering work, "anxious and hostile", impatient. Defense, destruction. "The head is the image of the animus." "She is in constant conversation with this autonomous spiritual factor." "Banal explanation." Did he take me prisoner - news of Robert.
6 Singing a 5th a 7th a 2nd. Already with him, just asleep then awake, to hear the door open. The steps creak near - and she below them maybe hearing too - will my fast breathing sound asleep - turning fast to face the one in dark suit standing at the beginning of the room, seeing him see she's naked turning out of her covers - transient men, old men, the hotel, sweat, tobacco smoke - gladness without shadow - nighttime - "the way you say 'yes'". Is it a sexual smell at his mouth? Don't care if it is - sniff. Long time in the night - he finds me to the beautiful ache - singing - "He knows how!" - oo it will really come to it - the complete - ghost covers over his head - he does return in times - has them. Morning luminous face - usually walk the twelve miles from town - stopping at the neighbours - "Well Michael, where have you been?" - road, pasture, creek - across the alley - "By that yellow and blue house" - "No, further" - "You're in a nice balance this morning" - yes - creeping in at the kitchen door - the mother's footsteps coming up from the basement. A swimming pool I jump in in my nightgown that I notice is spread in the upper water holding me - showing off I am. A basket of kittens and a few mother cats, deep pile, some crawling out and into the wall, something they've come from, some flayed or partly broken. What to do, open the lid of the woodstove, put them in, a rush of fine spirit fire, surprises me, looking in the grate seeing only a few twig embers. But he says the house is burning - I look out the window at its shadow, the attic triangle is all alight. My father standing calmly knows we want to try to put it out. We'll just go each to gather our own things. There's time. A pile in the trees behind our window, I go into the dresser to choose. We are all easily knowing what we're glad to have burn. I remember in the basement my boxes of journals. Will there be electricity? Oh yes for a long time yes. Paul's box - which is his? He's not here to take it, I will. The cupboards with blankets and quilts. This must be it though it's a loose carton. Then I remember my journal boxes too. 2 wart-things on the cervix. C is still sick. With J in the wild field by the telescope - blue jacket over there in the bushes - Ezra eats blueberries - that the family had seen her book - silence because - nicey voice - falling in the grass - putting hand in among pearly everlasting toward blackberries, hand is quiet enough to brave the bees - but they get me in the next place - "What do you like most about yourself?" - picking stems off pink clover heads, floating them in the watering can, squeezing them by handfuls to put in the drying basket. Some romantic piety tone in me. I want to tell her someone will what she won't. But saying the person's name seems fiction. She sits on the front porch impressing with her eyes. So how do you like my not giving you the attachment anymore. Going home thinking maybe she's been a deliberate vampire all along, like I'm worried I might've been with JG. Leaving someone angry. 7 Bike. In the room as it gets dark - my face in the mirror seeing myself carrying him to see us - beaming - lying chuckling and beaming ontop the sleeping bag pile - "I think she liked it rougher than I do" - watching can I surprise him - and then from slightest touch on the breasts feeling an acuteness like an electric field flow and ebb into my bum and feet - erotized - when I told him what it was doing - "Now the other one is starting, to sympathetically vibrate" - "a hot canal" - "a hot canal" - it's swelled and prickling - the way my breast and his hand, couldn't tell which, were a hot pile. Then about the flowers and crestfalling - "Don't do that!" - Hit! "Don't do that!" Punch! on the arm, feels very good! "I'll show you a position I like." His legs on my shoulders as he's saying he likes it too. Chokes laughing. My houri's light voice and so well-boned shoulders and waist near for the arm. Philomenes - liking to be lying with its heat along me somewhere, side of the arm, knee, bum, abdomen. Afternoon's research I can build with in the eve. In the rice bowl café saying about Apu and seeing feeling flush. Not wanting to say he's made a connection with R. She with him. They meet in the morning. As it happens. Istan bull 9 1. At Carnegie sitting to show myself to her and try being visible not seeing - struggling with breath and in body - the forehead sphincter - bringing him present - getting at moments a very light body - afterwards going out on the street as calm as sleep. 2. "Something I've been doing in the last few years with different people ... while they're dead, decapitated or some other. I have a very good imagination for that, I really see it, to find out how I react ... a little grief" - "They'll never do anything again" - what was so beautiful - "It goes on being beautiful for a little while." A spear through. I'm listening with our arms around getting alert to not miss any clues and yet not stop him telling. Is it magic murder, something about castration or circumcision, a way to get ready to lose me. "So that's the kind of murderer you are!" That, this aft, I'd thought to imagine carefully the worst, the lover killed and the lover gone with her, a beauty-awe, the beauty killed, being replaced by the beauty. 3. Daring to find the beauty's image dead. - We're on the field fighting big lugs - ugh - smash into them, fist, foot - like killing a mouse - (kicks me) - many but we're strong, we keep our own, but still so many, we back off. Brocaded with people like Carnegie people - the lugs outside - we say "Comm'on we can easily leave" - here or here - they shake their heads - try a corridor by myself, cut off - we say let's just walk out and we do - now what - a big road ahead, another that way - you say let's take this one - we're going along and see a big truck coming - it comes up and is shuddering, stopping, all that weight, I was always amazed to see all that weight creaking and grabbing trying to stop - I say let's go, let's get in - inside the truck is little, like an old Dodge, the round ones, push buttons, that little cab on top of all that - the driver is like a gentleman - the Blackpool curly beard - we're very comfortable, you put your head on his shoulder and your feet across me by the window - there's a third person - a funny place in the back where we put our luggage - indistinct was the third person there already or did they get in with us - they got in with us. Telling it naked on the floor, one thigh standing up at the chest, arms moving looking at the scene. I'm seeing upward from the floor, distanced: or, not distanced, but then thinking to be. Alone at the table by the side window, 2:45 sunline begun to rotate in. Remembering to unclamp the thighs. [Steady attention notes] 10 Taking the pants down a liddle. Penelope dreaming of bringing a civilization to her country, flax spinning - told sitting on one foot on a chair in the Loong Foong - glimmer and turned completely toward - she doesn't have enough money to go but she just goes - and Borus egging the farm boy on until he gets what he has to know, the wire body leaving its reserve - what is the magic of the narrowness of hips. At the west window last night with a candle further on the table writing for the small movies - a harsh face but hanging next to the evening color and red conté and dark grey, white on white - the swift rubs through - and waiting for the shape I'll recognize - there and googling out of a shadow at the top of the alley - I don't have to pretend not to be happy you're here - I can actress as much as I want - and shine down. Janeen's flush and silk eyes. Judy listening. Wrapped elvish around a meter as I limp beautifully away: pose. I'm going to find out what you like best and then I'm not going to do it - I'll use it for blackmail - no I won't use it for blackmail, I'll use it to trade. Some mornings ago as I wake seeing a scatter like pebbles - then hearing the last of the tire on the gravel below the window. Early waking - an anguish, something I should be doing, as if love playing is distraction. J's grieved stiffness. 12 Yesterday morning going in a skirt to sit at the counter in the oldman café. Smell of soap, narrow pale head, young clean one, abrade look sheering off, grimace.
Feeling the sun heat in the belly. Then the moment stroking it hearing myself having said "I have a sun here." Talking about London looking at him sitting in the big chair, we've been to Gomez for Saturday bread, a little overwhelmed then knowing to erupt, from behind with a pillow whapp whapp you're sitting there looking so handsome I want to beat you. Attacking with tickles and bad words. Ugly toes!
- Absorption: Love eyes: a scientific, erotic and prenatal attention; as to chemicals diffusing in a cell, emotion welling in the belly, sound registering on unborn skin. I was a child on a farm in northern Alberta. When I grew up I went away as I had dreamed to cities and other countries but in my mid-30s I had to remake myself, and I went back to my first landscape. For parts of three years, 1977-1980, I lived again, often alone, in a farmhouse among fields. As much as I dared and was able I made myself available to the spirits of the place. I was trying to feel out the idea of location. I made tapes, slides, study notes and other writing, a garden. Steady attention is the series title of the small movies made in this time. my camera takes 100' two and a half minute rolls of filmstock, and I used that length uncut as a simple limit for the shape of completed films. 'Steady' is from OE stede meaning place, as in 'homestead' and 'instead'. Attention as steady as a space. Scientific, erotic, prenatal absorption. Love eyes. - The morning time, its quality as if people in the warm light of engagement. "My sister had this look when she met her beau." Lips and eyes. Brooder lamp on in. "Are we going to do that?" Telling him stories to make his breath change.
Wanting to say to her, I'd have stayed with you forever if you'd wanted me and enjoyed me. 1. His right, wood man green dog; left, water looser girl cat. 2. Was it resisting control 3. Eyes right is the cool looker, left was in emotion 4. Nose right more bulged and opener, left flat 5. "I think I'm more intelligent than you are" Watching some of the old indicators, do I fall asleep as easily next to him as he, do I cry, to I catch focus, do I dream powerfully or beautifully, do I get to reverie lying beside, do I see anything better with - No, I can't let myself go in language.
[notes on steady attention organization] 13 Sore hearted - the losses As if maybe RM was a last chance - as if I was by myself really married to J and am breaking the last real tie I can have. The frivolity of taking up blind with someone whose legs I liked - like someone with no chances - it doesn't matter who, any body I want. Realizing after most of the aft with Mary I hadn't looked at her yet - him so sad and fat - Elfreda a girl who played the violin and was vivacious and liked him - "a German girl" - Jacobs. 14 That J told Mary. We're on Clearbrook Road walking toward the school. We go up a road. Garbage. And past a barrier. I'm saying Frank said there was a place with cherry trees. She likes the rank growing, a blackberry hooks the backs of her nylons and nylon dress. "Do you know tansy?" Something slithers. 'My mother' wants me to have 6 or 8 children. We've come to the end. It's run out. I thought we'd get through to the power line but she in her nylons. I can hear the highway. We turn back. He's camped at the gravel pit. We sit on the foundation cement, she's figured out it's the step, hanging our legs inside. I see him come out of the camper and take a leak. "A new stage?" "Yes." His and Peter's green (Fortrelle) pants. The horrible pale blue jacket he's proud to have got at MCC. At lunch she's talking feminist and I'm damping it. Not knowing whether to interpret all of it. Is relatives ancestry. Should I hear them speak as if they're part of me. Lisbet.
"Hast du noch die Freundin? Die mal hier war." Actinic - rays in violet and ultraviolet that effect chemical change The sense of, as if, is it, always two people speaking in the one statement. She said sound and meaning. Starting the day at sundown, an equal dark. Nyx goddess. "It seems there should be double description, from myself imagined as one among and in, and as the god in whose being all else is. (Both to be more developed, separated; and then to know which system one's using.) Lameness and femaleness. - Wallet pictures. Luke's beautiful human face. That Frank and I were always friends too, it wasn't only romance. Both swift to say we couldn't go visit him - "That's just what bothers her, you know a Frank she can never reach." Then feeling tragic, his loss, hers, mine now that I don't have a Swiegerin I'm proud of. And they enlivened by. And then, the way open to go on maybe, where you also are. 16 Out of the elevator in my hand a piece of cake on top of a plastic packet of tuna sandwiches. Coming to my table around the corner suddenly bright you so shining colored body. Am I brave enough to come forward as if you're here for me. And Manuel's setting his face on the table and smiling so balanced as we play at talking. Walking on Hastings, past the kung fu theatre seeing that his wiry hairy high bum does hold itself as if it's carrying a tail, and the way his clothes aren't quite buttoned, pants with raveled legs and safety pin. Cotton shoes. 18 "I'd like it if you could be in that state too." Leaving at night, then when I'm happily lying alone coming back. "All I really wanted was a cigarette." Smoky lip swelled. Gulping.
He wakes bright at 6:30. I'm angry he's dreamed something bad I'll have to read through. "I'm walking a long time on a road. You're with your friend Jania?" "Jamila." "Jamila, working with her on something, typing something for her. At the same time there's someone on the radio saying things about you, that I don't think are right." "What were they saying?" "Or they were right maybe, but I wanted to correct the tone." "What were they saying?" (Still hesitating) "They were telling the story of your relationship with a woman. Not quite that." The way he's living, I like it, but as if in relation to another time. He's been more singly what I also thought was right to be. Wayfarer. The way he's taught himself to clear so he can sit in Carnegie feeling everyone - clear the brick out of his head. So loving to look in his face. Winter in Edmonton, but just him, he didn't try for a friend. Whether I could gather what I did with them and try it with him. Distrusting, he too, our easy forms, seduction and past. You're not deranged and yet you're feeling more. A philosophy class as lab. What have I been thinking about today - him, what I could bring to get it closer to us - how can I honour him. I forget to know him inward, I forget I can. - And something about Jam too, whether abandoning her is jettisoning. "I hate my stiffness these days." - This handwriting, what it means so flat and tight. The study minute 19 Roy coming briefly to the door, that's a dream about the soul. When he's telling about the chicks dumped out of their boxes, 30,000 in an hour. What dream or foretaste was it, a future man telling me about their chicks.
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