|
19 September 1978 Vancouver
[I fly back to Vancouver]
In the little room, dreaming a forced landing,
in the dark safely down mother comes to tell us we're out of fuel, we were
traveling north, land on the road, an easy landing, Wills Manitoba, we unpack
our cakes, I set a parcel behind a tree across a road, there's a house to
shelter us, the first two floors are being built, glass and mirrors, we're
to be on the 4th, taking our cakes, there old Mrs Konrad who has lost her
husband asks about Grandma, has she lost hers. This variant of hostel dreams.
I went outside into greys, night but invisible
cars, no lights no headlights, a glint, crossing the road, car, am I blind?
Go to retrieve the parcel, then see a shape [sketch trapezoid] of space
with colors in it and wake, Heide opens the door.
The mountains from above, snow, brown, black, a moss.
J I'm happy to look at her, she's out of her mind. We have one and a
half minutes of talk and it is 'they' who pull it in us. Finally the limp
tongue got mad and went home. It was when my northern mind started to talk.
When she talked about her work, brackets, a structure in a canto, events
set down in reverse order, I didn't and couldn't care.
20
I am impotent and haggard and disobedient and rebellious and love nothing
and it was raining and again nondays.
Wim Wenders made a little fit company for a short while, people good
to look at, who could make sudden moves. I imagined myself like that, heroic.
[Wim Wenders dir. 1975 Falsche Bewegung]
21
In the early morning J to T, intimately: "Just
a minute, what was that?" touching her left shoulder. Woke me,
but clear and eager to tell.
And I was full of the acrobat girl who looked, didn't speak, and touched
as she wanted, and said "My actual identity is so eccentric I can't
be her, but one day I'll just begin to be her because I can't stand not
to be. But she can't be married, because she can't take the time to know
what other people need."
Her story of the vision: I'm laid out on a stage, people are taking my
pulse and saying I'm dead, she calls for a mattress and blanket and puts
me on and under, gets under with me and concentrates on not concentrating,
nothing of what anyone has ever told to do. She is feeling herself mending
the cell? And worries that I might not want to come back. I am revived.
While she tells the end of the story I am thinking that if she can bring
me back, I want her to. Then she says -
Walking back from the café where these stories were told, we see
flowers in the old convent site and find little bricks around them, found
flower beds, onions and cabbage among the grass, so beautiful and miraculous
I doubt I'm awake. As always, it is us, while touching her wrist, hand on
my abdomen, I see: traffic going through a dead end, fast, and a farm fire
from the air.
22
Have spring, play, curiosity at the festival [women's writing festival
downtown].
Silvereyes Jean-Vie [Lenthe] the boy in a suit walking unafraid throwing
her eyes to the sides. I'm in pink and not scared either. Looking for Barbara.
The transfuse from Jean-Vie.
Evening dinner and one looked into my eyes made it right and the worried
beautiful next to me.
At home Paul smokes and I don't want to be with it. Play piano.
Am ashamed of speaking.
Festival: feeling whether it's different, holding against the ugly.
Reading. Cam [Hubert] laughing like a free one. Light comes out of her
eyes looking. Creature face.
Then it's time to see her and I delay it in the Classical Joint because
of the fiddle. Squatting at the bus stop, in the big coat. Man: "Where's
the action in this place?" "What kind of action're you interested
in?" "Ladies." Freeze: "If I knew I wouldn't tell you,"
furious.
In bed wanting it dark, kissing and for a while molten but the early
stops and good will. It is the subtle test.
Mosquitoes, humming.
23
In the morning cold Paul says "Or do you just want to hold on a
little longer" and makes breakfast and is warmy. And at the festival.
Taxi. Came in high, clowning, gradually wear down. Silver-eyes is less,
but Cam, Cam to look at and at lunch boldly to ask and tell. You I like
you what do you know about.
The bull dream. "Is power always at the expense of another human
personality?" "Yes."
"I feel like I blew it." "You'll get another chance."
The man in yellow. "If you let in more than you want you can get
help."
"You don't do it, you just open the door."
Japanese. When green shirt friend comes in I'm so proud. A secret cottage
opens.
They scared me but were not part of me.
24
Waking. From a city with a canal, at the 9th street
rich people's gardens, only they have water, have been eaten by insects.
(Like canal at Steveston.) Breaking into a granary, bed on attic boards,
fumble below.
Getting acquainted being frenly, working to closer and the welling up
is near and I say "Move up I first want to put my hand there,"
the buzz to all the body like red [ripples sketch]. Not very like not at
all to please, only to follow, and how well in it, the expansion, marvel,
love, and relief, then knees up around eggs. You shake. Mouths open, gasps.
Exactness. Fine fine rough open let. And after you make a wrong move and
I get revenge.
Looking at the cottage and the light of skin in it.
"Do you want to dim me sum more" and it turned out to be a
real joke. Trusting the nonsense.
The garden. Shapes, filling between space, pleasing.
Diana. Little embarrassment squabbles and better, after, love and like,
information, the two extreme faces, worry and bliss creature. When I said
her shirt we both blushed.
25
After supper talking about the work. Yes I think you can help me, and
then I couldn't.
Her face talking about it.
26
Joyce and how much easier, red and blond, saying about last time. She
asked to make it possible - "I don't know how much you can see"
- "I can't see very much" - "interested but not very hopeful"
- she came back to it and I flattered her - she also flattered me - I formulated
the fright, "When I am in a moment that way, and it opens up around
me in that kind of depth, I think I'm going to die" - "Everybody
thinks that" - "But when I'm there it seems like I have no more
reason to be on this earth, [though] I think there are people who stay on
this earth even then" - "Yes, that's right" - "I feel
like there is a core person, she's just there, what she loves to do is just
be in existence and describe it."
"How do you think I could [mislead you]?" "It wouldn't
be that you want to, it would be that you'd taken a branch that was wrong."
"But I feel responsible to the one I started out with." "She'll
be there, you can't know that."
About the others in me she said "Yes I know about that, that happens.
All I can do is try to teach you to ground yourself in it."
"If I live as I know, 1. I'm out of work, 2. I'm afraid of evil
coming into the world through my openness."
"Other people work very hard for that sensitivity, you were just
born with it," [she said] twice.
"But people do go wrong, when they trust." "Yes they do."
T and E; her and me.
[Chair dialogue] She [power woman] said "I want your innocence,
your eyes, your beauty, your open face, your lyricism." I [love woman]
said "I want your knowledge and power."
"It would be fabulous." (Her word.)
Then I was colluding in the sense of successful collusion.
"You sounded lonely over there talking about what you'd lost."
"I don't know when I lost it."
27
The sumac.
She said she felt left out.
28
Waking not wanting to talk to her. Telling the dreams, hearing their
story, out of the sense of being in them: Rhoda,
bruising her. The man, landed owner, found a young boy to foster, we watch
the boy show what he can do, standing on a horse, driving others, balanced,
subtle, we love each other, he's for me, lifts me onto the ledge of the
second story window to see, being lifted. Told the story of Dickman
pushing on the round swing. I can't see you. Don't be angry, don't be angry.
I don't understand.
In the cottage, Evelyn's room.
Now. Reading Le Guin, she made a trance, I was down in. Powers vanishing.
Connected again, telephoning.
Gardening.
Wrestling, I liked to win.
Daphne's pretty ways, the animation if it tends to life, very much fill,
frivolity and speculation, I see how we've entertained ourself - her diary
account of the airport goodbye, that was so fine, making me the demonic
child. I withheld my dislike.
29
In bed from traveling with Jam, preparing for the long flight, but something
else, staying in bed 'til alone, Le Guin and by the excitement of her imagined
travel into the dry land dark, taken to call J, and breakfast, and lying
down, hardly noticing her but body humming and moving.
Camera, Roger's clear spirit. J walking away.
The garden, loosening and spreading parts, defining paths, the way it
is, not thinking, moving from one place to another trusting the movement,
tyrannical because of that relation to it, convention, foolish, I don't
care, the garden is for that kind of making, parts of it are beautiful conjecture,
some have been a long time unmade and unable to grow anything. These I seem
to be slowly filling from the edges, Chinese parsley with the carnation
stems, to support them. The little rock plants, love, intense love for their
nature. Long garden.
30
Anna.
Frustration.
October 1
Judy pale, frail, stooped, sweet, and older and younger telling her love
for land, rock and tree, she rowed on the lake to see stars reflected.
"I like to know you exist somewhere on earth, it encourages me."
"That's how I feel about you, you're an inspiration to me."
2
- C's face.
- J's stab.
- Going home hardening.
[With C] In contentment wanting silence to look at the walls and she
wouldn't let me. Photographs. The edge of stone coming, in a white part,
ridges, the flowered stone walls of acid Assyria. The slight ribbing, marks
in darkness. Her language, the person and her inner put outer. Reading them
differently than I can / I got lost and sad. Sat doubled in the bathroom
while she put on music and then took the telephone around the corner.
"I've been looking for this a long time." A hole in the sky,
the sky is a kind of spongy material. Her humor.
Especially saying hello, everything gladly released forward into her.
[With J] The hurt, I didn't understand what she said when she said it
first. The arrest when I heard. ["I'm not coming."]
4 October Valhalla
Dreamed some lovemaking with him.
The electric, when I put Barbra [Streisand] on for him [Ed], and had
that voice knowing it would find him, and saw how he looked at her face
on the cover.
Driving through the brilliance and sparkle of this morning early light
more space made by leaves' fall, yellow pale light on tree trunks, leaves
yellow just at the tops or on lee of copses, a greyer blue in the sky, flowing,
breaking, smoke.
Rudy's young rosy face.
Here dim in the house, wood, quickly a fire, to boil water.
Thinking about ?
Now I can listen again.
Necessity of telling J what she might need to know, it turned when I
found the way the connection was to Sandy, but by pattern. A kingdom lost
she said, I don't believe it.
[Bus trip?] Turning between the two rectangles, window and its print,
listening to mutter mutter grievance and sooth, both whine. Driving through
unfamiliar with her [seatmate I assume] telling story of the Hay River innocent
fisherman and his hidden wife, pale trees in the darkness.
5
In the night, a prisoner, with another woman. We
were the last to be destroyed in the hospital and planned escape. At the
last moment we'd missed our chance but hoped for another.
The paleness of the fields and air. Ran farther how? The cattle were
driven past between two barbed wire fences on the road. The car, feeling
right shifts. Valhalla, freer to look into it, because of the car? Yes not
tired. Poplars in a row next to the community centre with its stage, empty
hall, elaborate cookstove and fallen benches. The country.
Dull, color still finds me but.
Some time in Snow Country.
Reading 4th way medicine.
Feeling ready to improve.
The café. Woman "He's a boy alright" to the blind toothless
man who doubted.
J are you coming? Washed things because you might, and got paint.
Walking in dark listening to self hum, hardly anything else.
Toothache.
The old house on edge of a pine wood, a dim thrill from childhood sense
of what glamour.
Coat, socks and books.
6
A baby shitting from big asshole and another hole
in the belly, I could see the intestine. Yellow baby shit, kept coming out,
I cleaned it.
In bed, morning, bright, helicopter up to roof and out other side, small
plane so high I wondered.
Ran, and stood. The pleasure of making a fire and then running out in
the vest.
Thinking in Ouspensky, energy, where, for this task.
Understand almost nothing.
Trying to concentrate on painting the walls with a small brush, Camelot
music while I turn yellow white, I loved you in silence. The music now printed
in the walls.
All day singing Your body is the harbour that / a thousand ships stand
in.
Rudy with heater, I fell into place obedient. [My brother finds me a
barrel heater for the winter]
Sadness for J thought and hoped: cold, again, the ugly voice singing
to itself, she's loving some legended sulk, a spell, we are not imagining
it the same, she says it's demons and I should be intelligent but the grip
of her complaining voice is strong, doesn't like to let go. I'm angry. It's
true I want her here more than I want her, I have to build an authoritative
person for this, don't have one, except who refuses.
[Sufi notes
Perception of reality is hard to learn.
Whoever arrives at it is no longer interested
in reporting it, or in the perception itself.
Reality is something subtle and minute in its
description. Looking for it one comes through certain states.
The adequate form of speech is speech that draws
near. This nearing is only made by vigorous exactness.
Oh my brother! If you have understood you have
considered the narrow pass in its very narrowness, and you have represented
the imagination to yourself in its very unreality, and you have returned
distressed and full of anxiety.
[and more]
Ouspensky notes
False Personality doesn't make efforts, but it
defends itself
Do things it doesn't like - then it shows itself
in irritation.
The moment you suffer try to remember yourself.
Understanding who speaks in you and who you can
trust.
-
The real likes
- plant and earth world
- certain music
- heroic mythology and in people
- structure of tales
- writing
- travel
- magic, ceremonial
-
- [Later list in a smaller hand:
- outside
- travel
- reading close to a writer
- love music
- open love
- making
- Newton Kepler Einstein, mind finding
- noting
- color
- Sufi and Tulku aura
- the whole of language
7
Dreamed a man, boss, who took his flippers but
instead walked on the water, I was on the hood of the car floating in water,
ran naked across the beach where others had bathing suits on, a long beach,
tide down, into the water, very warm, a woman, she was someone I liked,
lying at the edge with two Sikh boys in turbans, one said "Ellie the
school bus is about to leave," came out through a corridor with little
African rooms, round. Telling J the dream,
she was far away in the audience, I noticed her lose attention.
Fasting, NW wind, earlier overcast now bright, outside to erase toothache,
scouting wood, J here as pain dislike and discussion about why she should
go back to Sandy and I should go back to my friends, under it is also a
small wish to go on. It seems unlikely and dishonest to our majorities although
not to our best ones.
Liking to drive to the store, grey-silver road, color on either side,
wind.
Sleep. Drifting into pictures and stories. Listening to the wind roar
in the pipes, the two roars, fire and pull of wind.
On on impressions.
Creek. Clotted lace, white grass, leaves clap. Old orange.
Crossing the creek breaking branches leaves covering water.
8 Sunday
I was going to stay up all night but faded at 2, couldn't do any more.
That was Ouspensky effort.
Woke and saw fine clouds.
Fright. What's it like, the car, money, driving at night the car maybe
not starting. What life am I in - only one?
All day in Ouspensky and cooking, Arden came and I sent him away, back
with the pretty young ones. She looks at her reflection in the window when
she gets up. Finding someone to be with them, uninspired and not watching
either, dodging. Forgetting what it could be, gradually the eyes come out.
The big farmer "How do you like niggers?" The young ones are with
each other and laugh. Some photographs have the sad pull of stranded families.
Arden when he takes his glasses off. Reads the palm, "You were with
somebody for a while, then you parted, it pulled your life out of shape,
off its course. That's your marriage line, your life line is your marriage
line," being interested in it, getting hope and doubt! Fred and how
it was hard to look at him, Arden is mean about women and Indians but they
like him.
"But Donny's got your number."
Television, trying to find ways to keep out of it and indulge at the
same time.
Toothache.
9
J and I at a women's festival? Go to Paris to have
dinner with a literary man, women keep arriving and sit with us, Maggie
comes and asks where all my grant has gone, I say I bought a lot of equipment,
she's turning away with a tear on her cheek, I have one too, someone starts
a religious song, I sing and others, soft pretty women's voices in the restaurant,
a seating diagram, the waiter fills my glass later, loose funny talk, thirst
my water won't wet, keep drinking, wake in this world with a dry
tongue. Get up and walk, wind, bog, clouds, slough, heaviness of a shit
to let out, cock turd, watching it and thinking of the movie. Fire and breakfast,
sit to papers.
We're here: what's it like, what's any of it like?
Read the dream of car crash, someone had died behind Valhalla the big
dark truck. Found note death in field.
Go to talk to J but she wasn't.
The stove shudder light moon crack.
Outside picture of shadow and spruce trees.
Toothache! Almost continuous.
Intense energy before and after the long orange light, outside éblouie
the soft and fine grasses, stands of willow different colors. Starting to
know the fields. At the beaver house a squeak in trees across. Intoxicated,
'thinking' about the movie dreaming greatness (caught it), stumbling over
ploughed field.
Earlier the stones and circle, quickly made, a pleasant fright and shut
the door with the box, a powerful secret, while making it was thinking of
the fright and whether to believe it. Watching the decisions being made
without thought.
She and the good will discomfort of talking to the dreamed one. Says
she doesn't dream me now.
10
Charm in one of the morning dreams. Going for wild
flowers to the back field. Found two thickly planted rows and an old woman
in babushka who was their guardian. She said they had been planted long
ago by an artist. I was interested. She said 12 years old. I imagined the
Jensen house. She at the time had been 17 and he'd shown an interest in
her. Going back to the flowers I threw the basket and shovel down, many
storeys, watched them bounce, jumped down storeys as if steps, wouldn't
have known when to stop going down if I hadn't sent the implements down
first. The steps were to do with the political régime. Trying to
make a garden, a long time working on rectangular beds some partly covered
[sketch] and circles. Was interested in the little plants, shouted at other
girls to get off, not to weed, because they didn't know which were seedlings.
Very small. And a daycare with a man. He's a different sort of man than
has worked in daycare before, I said, he looked like Sean (external to dream).
Menja nodded yes.
The smile coming in, M pinching me right away in her green sweater, she
said, because I'm slim. He brags about his toothaches, I talk like them,
she wants me to go to A man for all seasons, R is good-natured and
I see he begins to have a soft belly. Hurry to Beaverlodge on a bumpy road.
I tell all this from loneliness. Summary: physical difficulty, not trusting
thoughts, they're anxious, I miss the main ones, and they're about whether
I can manage all the troubles. Why am I living like this in this
place - imagine it's to test/remake the accuracy of practical brain but
borrowing money, getting help - and down in sightless - and the death hole
in the mouth [tooth pulled]. When I passed through Valhalla a coffin just
coming out of the church door. [Valhalla cemetery]
11
Coming up in the morning, still in the dark under quilts, I can look
at the weather through the airhole (all night my body keeps the airhole
open). Jamila - this was one I tried to hold onto - with
a young Chinese boy she's teaching swordplay, they're on steps or levels,
a Chinese woman gestures from a pile of mattresses, we're in a strange city,
it's quite beautiful, there's something I want to do but the young boy and
sword are the most important to her.
Feel out how to make the day, start carrying wood for her heater, I'm
delighted she's coming, make the curtains listening to Dawson Creek radio,
well baby clinic, senior citizens' announcements in a false voice with fairground
in it. Clean the hut kitchen and hit the road. In the black coat, walking
in bright fast moving air west, two almost instantaneous rides, a fat man,
hearty, in a motor motelroom rattling. He has a rum and Coke with ice on
the stand next to the gearshift. "Didn't I pick up a beautiful hitchhiker?"
A blond woman, bleached, in well-coordinated country clothes, folding her
arms over her chest. "My boyfriend is a commercial fisherman, he's
in a Cadillac behind." Sitting on the floor between them. "It's
not a hobby, it's a profession." He slaps her knee, fat hand: "You'll
get one, one of these times." I am cynical and don't see deep, he insists
on driving me home. They're hunting.
Working. Rereading transcriptions of Tao Te and Cloud of un,
they're beautiful, esp Tao Te. Find something for movie. Outside
a new bush, island, dense, rose thorns, it kept tripping me, strong roar
above, next, I got out by nearly falling into the creek.
Mrs Slette talking about how much she has to do.
-
turning suddenly with thumb out to stop either the camper or the car,
camper stops I run after it, the lens on back window door opens and above
is a fat diseased man welcoming me in, inviting me to sit at the back or
unfold a chair, a butter blond woman in orange lipstick and glasses, is
looking around, in both I see immediately and almost exclusively the grotesque,
he's friendly, I'm friendly with the countryside, which I look at with them
through their big screen, I am contemptuous of his hopelessness in his silly
rattling machine and her witless passivity dressed so nicely staying in
the background ready to be fucked when the greyface in the cadillac wants.
I didn't know - except I shd have got out and not been taken all the
way, for her. or what? he wanted to do it, his pleasure, he needed an action,
see what a beautiful hitchhiker, those hopeless, how do they get what they
need, and if they need it, what did he get, in the energy world did he get
anything I could have done with, and I had energy to work. having moved
fast.
except thinking about it I'm in his world, but it was one after another,
them, the tao te ching lovely notes, going back happily peeking into j's
pretty room, and standing in the bush, in the grey, with rose in the sky,
the trees weaving over each other and the deep sound the fright in the dusk
and certainty firmness about being able to leave it at its edge the moment
standing still with the tall dried queen anne's lace stalks, touching their
seed platform to hear the little music
went up - I thought - and saw the wood, and raven darkholme - stopped
the refusal - wanted to know more there were images too dim and the speaking
voice (that speaks ahead of this writing) said something like, it's thinking
but I'm not able to read it - went back lying down and in raven of course
found c the imperious curled lip, imagined raven seeing the one in the wood,
shabby funny haircut standing still listening with pleasure to the very
small ringing of the seedhead and looking past the first of the stalks to
more of them, presences, leaning one way
her. didn't get to the raven's opinion but mine was that it's wrong to
see her outside because she's unseen: her outside was the stalks and so,
in movies, to show people at certain times from outside is perversion -
then thought of my people and how they have to be outsides, began to imagine
how to ask them and how they'd feel about the movie, and how I'm already
in debt
- daphne's weakness and mine
- what is it. it's that our sensitivity to place is part of our gender
appeal
- we found out it could do that
earlier fantasy of writings, the many sorts of child experience surprising
in a book
sometimes a sense of already having made the mistake that makes it impossible
to go forward the right way. the branch on the lifeline and that the wrong
way is this necessary exercise in earth trouble
12
Zapped, caught, morning far away, the toothhole, during the night woken
to tend it, thinking what it wants - stroking? In the morning poke a bit
out of it, fascinating hole with soft stuff red and yellow in it, some loose
and some grown on - body machine - looked at erased rearranged some of the
Ouspensky sentences and put shirt on for Kerchief and Mrs Tofflin, Mrs Severson
in her car full of fliers, slow, close to the road, "I'm divorced,
I don't really like it." Glen Roland in his cap, light small bright
person, shows me under the hood.
I came into Epps with one of their sort of sentences half apology and
am lost from the beginning, he asks about my car with face full of jammer,
grimacing when I tell him what's up, and goes on with woe stories. And she
grimaces with everything she says, she's grey, after lunch I ask her and
she says it's too painful, how she can't bridge the abyss, start lecturing
her about why doesn't she take some weeks and be by herself, she says sometimes
she has from morning 'til night - but can't sleep and is losing access to
things she still wants to remember and is getting fat. Living for the next
life, accepting her fate. And doesn't want me to push. "I'm tired,
I just want to rest" with tears. Sometimes her face is quite tough
and shocking behind its glasses and bangs. "What you always wanted,
to grow, expand into new places" she said, "this is really me,
this is home." University.
We got the table together, some little pansies.
When I look at him I feel a patience and steadiness in my face because
he can't press with his eyes. "I gave a man a strawberry onetime -."
He laughed really, not she.
13
Fontanalia, feast day for visiting an old well.
Red east morning dark.
Headlights cold schoolbus lights, a stand of children waiting at the
crossroad, Valhalla and La Glace, exciting to be moving. At the airport,
in the kung fu jacket making little wars with strange eyes, getting in practice,
excited, pacing around, the odd people in their clothes, and being the only
one watching it come down, just before it touched, a man looked out - I
said "She made it down" and jumped out when they opened the door
from outside, a tired person in brown, roundest at the middle. Again. She's
there after the first one, the Indian sweater and red plaid bag, how she
looks, dull, but I'm out the door and see white dog in cage on cart, the
known person, a hug from behind the shoulders clamped by one from in front,
happy, she's not.
Driving, looking at the greys and browns. "I didn't expect it to
be this nice."
In bed a happiness very strong to have it filled, the vision.
Walking with Ezra, from then, a long way, crossing the dams. The stonepile.
The trees with the brown light.
Charlie Moodie's broken nose, the jelled blood.
-
in the bush the dark reds. colors in swarms, clumps, places. walking
through zones. the high trees make a roar from wind silent in other parts.
when we'd come across the dam the light was edge-on, only the poplars showed
it brown, luminous pink brown as if from the trees, less into the stand,
grey trunks at the depth beautiful, moving past it
14
First the sunrise light on west wall, rippled, two panes.
Talking in bright breakfast slowly cooking room - about - what beautiful
is - Sandy ugly - slowly driving to Hythe, the Swede saw, she carried it,
red handle, the United Church basement, Mary Davies, in the corner with
tea talking about focus, the anywhere levels, (speculation).
Home, taking a new north road, sleek sky, a sheen she said, look white
light on the grass either side white gravel road, the pale grass, luminous,
it's so extraordinarily luminous.
Driving slowly. Light on trees across a field pale grey cultivated fields,
smoke came pouring off a large field on the northern horizon
and up broadening slant into the white clouds, where it was brown.
Sawing feeling inspired to work in good detail, carrying wood on the
screen door feeling in small steps a swaying match. The sweetness of the
right tool biting fast and her face working.
At Homestead Hall supper, the beautiful red-cheeked kids, new babies,
a father carrying one, driving there sunset and moon rise, headlights in
the mirror, white, daylight, odd.
15
Strong indelicate nighttime arrival / thinking fast downslope about what
might be called by it. Her hard ridge and then letting in the understructure
fright. Here / bulls / death dreams / disaster. Which one would die if she
let in one or many, of them.
Sunday. Morning, person in big Chinese pants and small inside-out teeshirt
leaning forward out of chair talking about finding the frights and either
staying or running. "You had some kind of response to Charlie Moodie."
"Yes." "Do you think there are frights I haven't found?"
Afternoon while x sleeps I am in the room with cameras excited.
Walking, guilt about 'work' telling myself it's alright, I'm the sort
of person who does that kind - not knowing is part of it - not wanting to
be a special kind of person - strongest in past days the sense of this life
and all its parts being - a one-person dream/test making a certain kind
rather than another. Walking, the fright of responsibility not knowing -
without passion (bled - pressure). The camera interrupted sense of the fields.
I wasn't concentrated and was impersonating other times.
What is this place - as dream - that's what comes with you.
Tired by early. Ran in moonlight. Lying under a branch the sense of trees
at a depth.
16
Night kissing the blond woman - basement room.
Waking. She makes the fire and we're in bed a long time talking about
the sad foolish compromised sex of college.
I pull down a dead tree, she cuts up spoiled meat.
The road turns alongside a lake with swans, many. Stop. She goes carefully
through rose thorns, I get to the firm edge of the lake, pretty cuniform
on the edge, large and small [diagram of crossed swan tracks]. A blue watermark.
The line of wild lettuce I sit on my heels on. Their calls as they go to
the other side not hurrying, the white and dark swans. The lake long. Mareotis,
a lake of some other land, my friend pointing a camera at me, behind her
a house I loved for some reason. [May 1979] Then they whack
their wings, one or a few, in the louder deeper voiced south left group.
The right/north big quiet excited group. One takes off and circles its group
low with a particular cry. Beautiful light. One red 22 shell she picks up.
At Connelly Wong's café she talks Chinese and I blush.
At home we cut posts and carry them on the sledge.
I cut two trees alone and think of The fox. [DH Lawrence film]
Cook and eat good cheese sauce.
She cries, wants to run away and become a saint.
Moon brightening a lot of sky in thin cloud, white curtains, it blue
and yellow. She saw a train while I thought Kawabata.
17
Morning tired but up make fire and best eating breakfast outside warm
sun talking about analogical universe-thoughts.
The way it shocked me and her too - her - and her sorrow - him - going
back - I can't tell it - his assault, "Orientals don't kiss" -
I study human behaviour.
The three men with Cherry Jack trying to be let in.
Her.
Night wind. The character of this day.
FP writes fluently but whenever it's deep -
18
Early bed negotiations about Luke and future. Morning pancakes.
Driving alone looking at trees in blond strip of grass between two black
cultivated [fields].
Back for camera, still: stones, borders, zones, and bushes. Most were
only experimental but the branches so like veins into air,
visually the willow branches into all the surrounding field.
Thinking about film as projection or research (or like C's finding a
way to tell).
The concentration and radiation of stone or bush.
Morning - energy woke thinking and talking.
Middle working at photographs not well.
But by evening shot 1. learning tripod and camera.
Looked at slides, she grouchy because of food difficulty.
Walking. Not dark, she said grainy. Lying down the arch made in grass
past shoulders and above head, a lot of moony dotted sky in.
19
Waking by being made and not minding, no will for revolt, and getting
to like it but still hungry and trying to turn it, wrongly, made her sad
and lonely, the story from grade 12, embarrassed, sad, but wanting to give
it to her and have it seen.
She got me by other means too - him.
And I confessed scared for Luke, Jude's child.
Then sudden wake to something wrong. "No I don't think I'll come
back in November."
The testing of Miriam, the defeat of Miriam. (ie Lawrence)
Took it over the log and lay with pink feathers built. Well there's something
left.
"I thought I had to be lonely to be happy." "Do you think
it's true?" "No."
Reversing, she's better and I'm worse.
20
Dream of her family and the fine children, I was
as a poor relative, but found a way, above art (panes of glass set in corridor
on the way to the bar) to get to the main part of the house.
Energy for housework because I was going to smoke. In it fast fragments,
only briefly with the perfect version young one, fragments speculation floods
of what I don't know, hardly eyes.
Hatori came to me, Peter Dyck, the moments some knowledge was exchanged.
I seemed to remember the quality although not the detail.
Trouble about religion.
Refeeling the jealousy of the intensity of her meeting with him. (Luke
and me: did I leave quality for social muck.)
Speaking on the sofa about working on our 'selves'.
She held her hand up in light while reading. I imitated the gesture and
she stopped.
21
Psychophysical experiments with girlfriends, rivalry with J.
In newspaper someone writing about nature and god. We talked about why
one seemed something to her and the other not.
Seen passing. Black field with spruce. This brief bare season, sun.
The house by lake. Owning it. Wood and red chair.
She came through and said love has to do with order, sense of spontaneous
order.
Arden enlivened for story of excitement, diesel fuel and sawdust strewn
caught fire. Fred by picture of Ezra flying in cage. My social topics animals,
plants, season, money.
Imagined working tapes with them.
Learned. In cold excited flashlight northern arc orange moon at horizon
[sketch] rose with Castor and Pollux.
22
From many dreams - in the night the restlessness and pain in breast.
Saw the animal I thought was a cow, who turned white
bullface and form and threatened to charge - I whisked myself away -
intensity about the constellations trying to find a way to be among them
and see them all around - telling in bed and getting up to cook, she was
nervous before and I during, bored irritated suspicious rebellious and J
urbane and charming. (Judy's miscarriage.)
After exhausted, evil spirits, even walking, the lostness thrashing through
paths trying to see through everything said and not letting those
communications alone to look after themselves. The woods in the cold overcast
with bits of rain, dead branches among the live, life of greys, reds and the
palomino grass.
A young person in sweater, grey, carefully coming behind. Once I turned
and saw her flat.
The beavers' houses and dams, ponds, they're the small people who live
there.
I was ashamed of myself and thought we'd fight.
In bed, collecting the story, and grateful for the support to tell it,
she stopped me and didn't like it although I put in things for or I thought
with her, is it. - Then fought. Pain, hysteria. Trying chant and drum to
ease it, wasn't 'til she spoke.
"Do you think I'm unspirited?"
Her daddy face with hair down.
Moaning and drumming.
23
We talked about yesterday and why.
Dolemos coming in although I wasn't awake and could scarcely -
Glenn Roland wanted money, there with J in car.
The fields cultivated stripes, beautiful black in the west, turquoise
sky under cloud arch, pearly clouds.
The house by the marsh - sawing soft thick poplar as if limbs, the taste
on hands, in dream I'd gone into it and found glass
in the windows, curtains, layers, then saw other furniture and went opening
doors, seeing clothes, a room with two beds, persons, being table height
and taking two cookies, then realized I was out of body and wondered how
to get back into it.
Full of social mind.
Clumsy in work, brute she said.
Today it was in thinking about her and me until making supper turned
into harmony.
And then the sun came down past the arch and outside the brilliance of
orange on the house and the blue intense shadows of grass and how fast it
faded. Things nice to look at.
In the deep grass after shitting in the bushes: she looked down from
upper window, I was scared of what she was, so compact face. She teased
Ezra to ease me. "But I seem to understand your questions."
Broken windows.
24
- J's fire went out.
- Car wouldn't start. Choke and nice man.
- Nick Siebert's accident.
- Bad driving.
- Uneasy normal talk.
- Flat tire. He had trouble putting it back on.
- Cold, wet feet.
Behind, in Grande Prairie, a sort of marvel at what can be in a day the
faces on the street brilliant shine on the street as we came in from the
north, motel and thinking of strangers' rooms.
Reading Halston's butler in Moroccan robe bending over marble table with
orchids.
Bergman with 5th wife and 9 children, flowers on his head sitting on
steps.
Leo Siebert's open whole soul and two nice together across the table,
a family.
A girl baby with light across her, hat pink parka frill of a skirt around
its bottom, looking, walking, rocking one flat foot to the other.
On the way home the east place. I could hardly see it but was lonely
to take her there and have her imagine my child, turned round and walked
across cultivated, that was enough, cold.
25
J's mother saying glad to see her turning into
a woman (in long dress).
Roy and Sara moved in across the road, she has
a thin hard bun and another baby in her, I ask R for Luke, he says okay,
go to S and entreat her, she wants me to live in their house and help her,
I say I can't because 1. I'm not fucking anyone and 2. I can't talk to Luke
in my own language with them. While I talk to her I throw a big pot and
carelessly ripple in the neck. Go home with Luke, R's with me, between the
two places I step over a stone and see he's put two chimneys on it, one
with a bit of bark for smoke, smile and am with him seeing it - upstairs
Luke gets in my bed up I think he should be on his own on account of pinworms.
Wake - belly fright - she's going and doesn't want to tell - we are where
nothing satisfies, I hold steady to cook but cry and reflex, in the horrible
pain think of a way to save honour and go on heroic, we taste loss and freedom
in front of the fire, concentrating.
More of the hell, sleeping but unresolved until reading Dante she cleared.
And then both read instead of smoke and resolved.
The burnt Kuan Yin laid on log. [Jam put her little wooden figure in
the stove.]
Wind. Movie thoughts - the rise of concentration.
How thought and seeing move.
"My goddess said I should just love you no matter what you do but
then I'd have to love everybody like that."
Night advertising imagery, woman in blue dress.
26
"It's a catastrophe that would stop me from coming back."
In bed talking about afterlife. Instead of a soul, a life. "What
I want is to use energy properly."
Sleeping, alarm clock, resetting it, kisses and rocking, quick morning,
warming car in the dark, waiting for person two trips with suitcases from
light, the schoolbus lights at distance, red flashing, we set out (driving,
mirror presence, plaid bag, dog). Stars clear, a few very white, Orion high
in the south. Car goes sweetly, stronger, peace. Once twice three times
a lady / and I love her. Light comes quietly the joy and marvel of this
journey are dim and substantial, through Valhalla and turning in La Glace,
is it really so, here, with this companion, turning herm, south, lights
in farmhouses, it feels like BC, country mailboxes, rural.
When I can feel it I think this is heaven.
"I think we did good work yesterday, I haven't seen that face in
some time" and I could feel how clear it was, and hers, the face that
I keep in front of my eyes, but not driving, it was only presence I wanted,
not talking, morning highway. Airport watching Ezra, shining out, and at
the door the stewardess smiling far in saying "The dog's not going
and you're not going." A marvel. And going to the car with Ezra feeling
a fright of continuing to live in happiness and confidence. Getting books.
Mary looking at the cat on her plants. Marveling, rapture. Murdoch, ate
through.
part 4
- up north volume 1: 1978-1979 june-january
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
|