up north 1 part 4 - 1978 october-november  work & days: a lifetime journal project  [alternative edited version] 27 October 1978 Valhalla Cold. Not much. The sun rises on the wall but not stirring, work. Aspen grasslands, notes, a sort of refining. About movie. Etymologies for information. All day J's here, I'm building doubt, and she too. Firemaking, fixing. After hard to be outside, cold stare of the fields, wind. Careless ambitious pictures of field, the creek, on heels, quiet long enough to be moved by flocks of fish under ice passing bits of twig. Ezra outside with blue shadows on her. [red leaves] [the meeting] Wrote Judy twitchy, strayed into intellect without ground. Doubted the work but ambition interested. Soil I thought was this season's study. Thinking about 28 Dewey Stickney. Facing him calmly in a small house, when his wife comes in, a certain loud confident practical English woman in orange lipstick, I see him watch me look at her. (He's agriculturalist in Southern Alberta, famous.) Scholarly. Dozed tea and coffee twitchy. Trying to see through. Work on movie notes. Foucault. J's dog comes asking. Fire's worker. Outside white sky. A few Castaneda notes. Hiding in papers wondering whether to burn. Read early this journal, doesn't seem so wonderful. Car watching needle say car's warm, at Valhalla Centre. Flaten next to the door, "I see you've got a sheep with you" surprised a happy reply like they haven't heard. In the store it's suspicious. I don't know them except he's so familiar. On the way home black fields uphill to horizon. Double diagonal [sketch] with barn and house on the line. Stopping in the woods with ax, saw and dog, hang black coat on a tree, feel the house woods of childhood. Sawing and moving brutally. Notice between logs a red light on the top of the trees and very intense pink on the fields. The ring choc of logs striking each other. After supper Inferno run through looking for my own sins and finding him an immoral writer with some very pretty lines. Irritated. Body and world not there. Farting. - [Castaneda notes] Really learning is hard and makes confidence. The confidence is in the choice of path. It's the best alternative. One of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the hardships of learning without rushing or faltering gone as far as she can in unraveling the secrets of power and knowledge You have to be strong and your life has to be truthful. Any path is one of a million. Decision must be free of fear or ambition. The path with heart makes you strong, the other weakens. [and more] 29 Sunday Working at the desk except going out to saw in the dusk, smoked, looking at the flow of air showed by window light, like 3-D water shadow showing currents and it flowed down into more concentrated orange. Difficult to open/concentrate and not just notice it, seems the movie should begin on the other side of noticing a marvel. But to read it? And then? It was like a Jaina diagram. Frost, very cold, blue long shadows on the stubble. Tulku. [airplane] - [money page] [more synthesis lists] [notes from Tarthang Tulku's Time, space and knowledge] 30 Have to finish high school, no, it's college this time. Haven't got my degree - yet - still studying every day - in bed last night fantasizing Joyce and what I could learn and play with her - with pleasure and love. Tantra book, fantasy of making/understanding ritual. Element notes. Afternoon stringy, wanked, felt distaste, went to Box 96 and opened to empty [sketch], stopped in bitter wind for firewood sawing, stiff brown leaves rattle, cleaning fast, strong, both rooms, fires, listening to news of J and T and R, Charlie three times over the yard. The beautiful light and white bull, cattle moving at close-up, loaded camera easy but too late, ate and went to desk, found calendars, at midnight driving through cold black the light making forward, car sliding on gravel, road familiar, thinking it turns into a dream when you go somewhere else, but I can get it back. Fear before going but testing: I can aim to drive and it will be so, I can telephone and it will be so. She was remote remote I held her just, with continuous tension, she'd smoked with R and T and been among them as she likes, magically, playing - it only got looser when I said (she: "You got more woebegone," there's a contempt or impatience or pity new)(but I can -) . Made chart. Home head out window looking at Orion, meeting Sirius, Procyon and a brilliant blue one I don't know. 4 AM light. Smiled to realize this is it, the last year of college. Rage at this place, almost panic. Going to move. - the elements' cores, their energy and quality the symbol that reveals their quality was it mourning years of it movie (task) friend parents most. trying to learn about what I am and anything is (not knowing is the posture) a friend to come into the garden with me and unhypnotise me from what I always knew in this world there are crazy people jesus afterlife   I thought I undid the wrong teachings but reconstructing childhood leaving childhood there are many puzzles I imagine I can be a goddess but when I am I lose certainty and go into them to see if I have made a mistake go on saying things i've forgotten the meaning   carol who speaks as she does because she stays with ordinary people those who work on ideas ideamakers they say we don't have to live in them when I say soul I mean (saw a sheet of metal) template romance to work at one's mechanism they somebody I can really talk to wanting to write books scattered what I think   the hidden broken scared thinking or else certain thinking   what religion is trying to keep the two minds of what it is from inside to what it is for hypothetical other points hatori 'you mustn't let yourself get old' to tell stories I used to be one who liked to tell stories I try to look after the world, but that's because I'm trying to tell my own story one would have to meet her in writing   how this one was set up god is the sense of hidden rules thinking about thinking is like going upstream how could he have found a way to pay for our error either it's error or instinct: trust when I think of taking an art I'm afraid in religion   I was that time and now the push to know from a picture of existence the traveler sending messages   dream. the fine children I wanted to join they didn't doubt themselves her not coming   if not this life next one flying dutchman I read about another kind of people and wanted to be like them   what really interested what else was there   she always wanted to be outside she always wanted to be with the fine children   self c is a trick for dominance the world made is the work   shulamuth [firestone] and did it send her crazy to break out   build one of whether any question is personal or not I held something for the best one to consider, and behind her   following the sense of quality love the navigator   what they disturbed was my trust in the particular compass I had, love given to quality     its opposite is shame why I don't like to see paul, andy, john     they loved me as quality they go slowly and test making conscious space woman is one who makes beautiful orders other people can be in still dream the train journey missed baggage misdirected to the western region rummaging ideas building the selector watching trying to see which are the real sins watching everybody's instructions being preoccupied with instructions is being lost   whether civilization flatters some ability not getting the information I need instances of love the quest was foretold posture of one at a table looking inside or taking notes looking at something if god isn't imagined as a person the arch of sex, in lady and knight and bone if self is felt as the early one, then later persons with their skills and cultivated interests don't feel like home building the old one in the new one self importance of religion and soul, the freedom of a life magnifying glass. privacy of old man with bigness of small things I want to know about steering thoughts relation to anxiety occurrence 'formatory' nature   impersonate a found one? building the discursive one to come to nothing to be lost to go through   the curved queen who survives a lover always the same enemy sister   the year to come into the year how to study something quality in memory language association (poet) ways learned   the slighter seasons 'an irrational grief because it would all be covered with snow when I got back' in the old / other systems / art / the way reference is misunderstood arbor vitae symbols literalized body experience 31 R came oily and offered me a baby, I seemed to agree. He put it in, Catherine interrupted, said she had enough grandchildren. A group of women making gardens (Maggie, Diana among them), I finished or stopped, they went on and constructed stalls, with mangers, each a different one. They were looking at the moon, in a field with cows. They wouldn't scare off when I shouted but when I did a high scream. Woke hearing the cattle. Hythe, the strong wind pushing the car, fields, beating trees. A sharp edge beauty, at breakfast and lunch J, when I tried to call I was afraid, I'm telling myself it will be fine for her but I dread losing companion you. I make myself firm toward working life but I want to share it. George in the café, I felt him, passing the fires on the way home, delight, the smoke blowing up off acres of red willow, [cultivated high] [cultivated low] going back it's not the same, the strong wind ceasing [seizing] car door, stubble field roadside, getting out again and again to make or try a picture. I'm in pain about J - ceasing - because I wasn't warrior enough - I know it's the bender in me. Thought today, intoxicated, about the unconscious moving. Found in Plato, all good poets are possessed and inspired and have no art, call these men divine who are often right in what they do and say, but have no sense while they do it - arguing with Trudy as not for a long time about my intuitive gift she wrecked maybe - yet had a sense today of learning a subtlety for any frame - the little parts - mocked in Vogue - wanted to live here 5 years making pictures and demonstrating freedom in a schoolhouse with constructions and garden. That was intoxication and is pain-comfort? - he believed he had a divine mission to test all statements, and that a voice guided him in all his acts all the good poets are inspired and possessed and have no art   for a poet is an airy thing, a winged and holy thing; and he cannot make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his senses and the mind is left     the only poetry that each can make is what the muse has pushed him to make   soul feels inspired and present in the action   getting power one poet hangs from one muse   your soul dances and you have plenty to say you are divine and not an artist now those opinions have been stirred up in him as in a dream; and if someone will keep asking him these same questions often and in various forms, to manage houses and cities well and honour their parents and know how to entertain fellow citizens and strangers and speed them on their way call those men divine who are often right in what they do and say, but have no sense while they do it     by divine allotment incomprehensibly this is what I still, even now, go about searching and investigating in the god's way and showing what is in me in my usual way to any one of you I may meet to offer yourselves readily to be made as good as you can be 1 November Woke at night, anxiety, two tour buses after the morning at the hotel, room 61, is she in the other one? It's going to Montreal. Stumbling. Crashing dimly knowing there's pain, only realizing how bad when I hung up on Sheila without knowing, drive, with Ezra and stuff, to La Glace? No, to Mary, not home. I phone. "What's up?" Confess and soak my shirt and she gets to be the calm one but doesn't say there there and treats it rationally from a long distance but I feel better. "Are you worried about Trudy?" Reading Wiebe Big Bear impressed with his accuracy. Catching little worms with a pencil, looking at purple anus in spotlight. She doesn't let herself admire me for my gifts and what does that mean? - unless we all together make a life circle with our hands and face the whiteskins as one it came so motionlessly close into the frame of his vision that individual hairs curling in sweat laid themselves open before his sight [Weibe Big Bear] the only one you said for me to go fight my enemies until they cried out and said they were sorry they hurt me reading and feeling guilty, radio etc you are come to the very edge of the wild magician guide, necromancer   ceesthesia, diffuse internal awareness of body existence artemidoris - oneirocritica the self healing nature of the spirit somatic awareness enter temple. perform ceremonies. purified by offerings, massage, incense, stretch on skin of ram that had been sacrificed. dream remedies the obscurity in the centre space time and causality radio designating general mood transubstantiation of sensations into dream images abstract thoughts converted to pictures trying to say the same the mind is in the same state relation to its images, as in waking dreams conserve earlier personalities some part doesn't sleep, obviously a sort of fasting   not knowing what 'we're here' for, some have elaborated that as if we can imagine an explanation steiner. dreams represent self     house they will sometimes tell us that even during the illness they occasionally had the feeling that they were only caught up in a dream fire fills the log 28, 23-day periods memories which complete a biological period artemidorus. a dream means what it brings to mind     principle of magic, association restful expression of a self observer wrinkling of the reflector critical   there is at least one spot in every dream at which it is unplumbable, a navel, as it were, that is its point of contact with the unknown disturbed dreams already found in children of 4 or 5 invent some unsatisfying answer identifies with people who are lovers or lovers of lovers anxiety dreams sexual content when anything in a dream is actually spoken not thought it derives from waking speech something in waking reminds, pictures, homologies, a secret judgments on a dream are part of latent content a dream of impatience 2 Moon she had grown a fine line, southwest when the sky was still light, today's decision was to shoot when she says to, the bucket and the corner with wind. The doing of worm war, shitting on Peter's Renoir essay and looking at the little ones come out, when I'd done the washing procedure they had spun out lace of eggs frothy around them - put it in the fire - impressed with making action but weak, two days too weak to saw. Lost cable release. He was complaining about Nick Siebert an old story and the voice of self righteousness. "Did you notice, Jam has a little scar on her neck?" Addressed to him. He: "No, I didn't notice that." M: "But Jam certainly isn't fat." I: "Well, she is plump." He: "She has quite a masculine build." I" "She doesn't have a masculine build, she has a masculine stance." M: "Yes, the way she walks, she looks strong, determined." I: "Anyway, what's masculine about that?" He: "It's not feminine, it wouldn't make the boys notice her." I: "She's not interested in boys," over a tremour, shocked. He: "I know that." M: changes subject, "Have you heard from Jam?" I to him: "You noticed her." He: "Yes, because she's interesting." I cut through and say "When I was a little girl you used to ..., you're attracted to a certain kind of woman and it's been a curse in my life! ... No but my father wanted me to be a certain way and it made it as if half of me was divided against me. I was born out of you and I'm telling you my pain and grief and you won't listen. I'm giving you a chance to be a father and you won't take it." He: walking toward the door, "It does no good to talk like this, no good at all." I: "That's because you won't open yourself to it." 3 New Cornwall address came. Luke went out into deeper water and I following suggested we clean out the pool, we threw bits of straw and stones onto the bank. Marlys? a younger sister, had cancer. Dream a little dream for me. Morning and night whistling. Today found Freud in car. Flat tire rear right (dream location), rear right foot. The oilwell men I couldn't overpower. Reading thirst dance Wiebe - mail - flat tire - Mr Wells - the old house raided - delight at comics but less reading them - exorcism and plane crash in Star Weekly - oblivion - then two and a half hundred pages of Freud. I'm running from something. Fantasy quarrel with him, sense of loss of J, in Freud I thought what I'm running from is some knowledge of wrongness of this project, which I keep trying to find some way to be interested in. 4 [very disordered writing] The dust [?] was drifted. Hand on hip. Slabs. Souls are roots from two people. Organs. Mud. Escapes backward. Hair is shit. Morning in comics. Went out to set bales and get the garbage out of sight for winter. Snow. Flat tire. The signs say I'm in the wrong place. But? The light of winter, white. J's been to T, I'm talking to myself about my defeats, am weak and desolate and say I'm lost and how will I carry on etc. You stupid one you lost me everything I ever, etc. Sick. Worms coming out. Sense of separation from the time of penetration. Diaphragm pain writing J. Ashamed of my vehicle. Angry with my animal. For having no mastery. Missed filming beautiful air mix on wall. Addressing the soul no personality of someone. Escaped into: ceremonial diary, for the sense of alternation but not ideas, which revolt me.\ The Sufis still bless my mode. Love, poetry and ordinary life. Cold. Evening wrote J in pain, self dislike. Burnt. Read diary of early time, headrush sometimes accurate sometimes not / very emotional hope and fear. 5 Woke in pain about time/life/losses etc. Can't remember how old I am or what year it is! Crying howling but pink cheeks. A few little worms still moving. Grumbling wrongs. Joseph Olson. 6 miles. Vowing lightness. Wrote. Sleepless. But it seemed to be over, the worst. - [story] Sunday Pain, inner complaint, enemies reproached. Wincing back from it. Walk. If I go right at this corner, there'll be another road back in a mile. Come 'Ez. Wrestle down a few fenceposts for firewood later. Walking, put mittens in my pocket. Glass among stones under a rose bush. Combed soil, black, sleeked down. The big fields. Fence posts some standing some fallen, three wires standing and falling parallel. A loghouse without door, glassless, black, and the black soil close up around it. Take the corner of the right hand field to hit the road further on from the farm with Sunday company parked on the yard. White feathers singly stuck to soil. They are individually perfect. I pick up three. They heat my palm. This road I came to meet is just a track, but I knew there'd be a road allowance here. The fields on either side and the small trees on the fenceline already feel safer. Who drives here? On the right I can see the trees on my creek beyond the field, I like this navigation around home but from a new side. This road makes it back behind Valhalla, behind the house. Northwest. The road seems to end further on. A creek? A slough, willows, spruce, white grass in front of it. On the edge higher up what looks like something in white blossom - what? Ezra takes a trail into the centre. Willow feathered out in a mistake. Firewood? A fallen spruce. The road is still there curving around west. A lake. It has kept the snow. Acres of pale brown grass on this side of it, a different color inside the right-angled wire fence here. On the road, shocking willows, their color. The little bushes make me stare, the way their orange comes out of the ground in many shoots and goes red, even purple, at the tip. That slough, no one overlooking it, a good place. The way it's clumping colors, grasses. The eyes are wavering today. When it is curving back east, black cattle. Is there a good fence? A single wire? Shall I go around? No, have to brave them out. Ezra don't bark. Getting closer. They've lifted their heads. Where's the bull? Walking fast. Don't have frightened thoughts. I'm seven feet tall and majestic. Walking with longer steps. They're moving to follow me. Is that the bull? They've begun to run, but toward the other side of the field where one of them is standing alone. Is that their leader? Is there a gate they know about? Black cows running in the dun grass, it's nice. A house back in the trees, tin roof, a little brown house. Look at the track, does anyone drive here? Rarely, nothing recent. Nice old log barn with straw rotted on it. Hayrick broken down in the grass, tractor. A long drive. I could live here - Going up the drive, a plank bridge nicely made over a ditch. In the west of Ireland the cottage that attracted like this. Empty? Looking in the window. A movement. We ran. The door opened behind our car door slamming. There's fresh wood - is that fresh wood? An orderly pile. But no smoke? No curtains. Paths? Ezra's at the door. I see air wavering above the chimney. Ezra. Whispered shout, and turn to go. "Come in if you're not" - doorway, old man, his face in a circle of hair and beard, he's quite beautiful - "afraid." Coming back, "I'm not afraid but I thought nobody was here." On the doorstep looking at each other. "Should she stay outside or can she come in?" Hesitation. I'm waiting. "Bring her in." Dark, small. Woodstove, very ornamented, giving off a lot of heat. He moves a pot off the fire. "I'm baking bread, pretty good for an old man, eh?" Careful, don't put him into a story. Want to stare. He looks Irish. That's his shining face and the red dun in his beard. He's out of a tale, he's the old man living alone in a house in the woods. What is he? He's a magic man. No he's something else, what? Sit on a bench. He's opening the oven. I get up to look. He takes out a scorched newspaper and under it 4 loaves in one pan, black at the top. Sets the pan on the wood pile. Goes into the back room. I sit down on the bench again. He gets a pile of brown paper bags, flattens one on top of the other, puts them down on the table and knocks the bread out onto them. Goes into the back room, brings back a yellow lard pail, opens it. That's a little rectangle of leather - pigskin? Scrapes out the bottom of the pail. Spreads lard on the bread with the pigskin, one scrape for each loaf. "Some use butter but I think lard softens it more." Closes the lard pail, takes it into the back room. Does he have his wits? "What's your name?" behind me. "Epp." "Speak higher, I can't hear you," left ear at my mouth. Beard very close to me. "EPP." "Nep?" "EPP." "Not so high, lower." "EPP." "It doesn't matter, I'll know you." "What's your name? What's yours?" "Joseph Olson." "In a while we'll have some coffee, do you drink coffee?" Nod. He's too close, chucks my chin. "You think I'm cute, do you?" "I think you're kind of cute" he says. "You're a girl aren't you?" Shake. "Boy?" Shake. "Married woman?" Shake. "What are you then?" "I'm an ARTIST." "You paint pictures?" Shake. "I make movies, MOVIES." He doesn't get it. That's when he goes for the box of pictures. He sets a box on the table in front of me. "I'll show you these, maybe you'll know some of them." I'm sitting with my right shoulder to the light, his black clothes close to my left shoulder. He holds the photos and passes me one at a time. "This is a real old time, over at Ronning's." "This is my niece." "Can you guess who this is? I had a trapline. There I am," pointing to a part of the picture where no one is. "Twisting bannock." The photo is of a man standing next to snowshoes. "Bannock?" No good. We go through them fast. My shoulder aches from holding it bent with him. We have to go through this. "This is Gus Olson and his wife." A tall man in glasses and suspenders, a short woman with her arm around his waist, standing between the square pillars of my house. "Not his first wife, it's his second wife, Rhonda I think he called her." "This is the café up at ." "This is Mrs Stickney." A woman with a round hip holding a kitten to her face. Dewey's mom? I think so. "This was my partner on the trapline." "This is , at the homestead." He means this place. A young man standing with his feet apart on the doorstep with a broader shadow on the logs next to him. "This is the four oldest boys." "This is Angus MacFarlane up at . Did you know him?" Shake. "Nearly everybody did. This is the school I went to in Minnesota." Postcard, Ana, Minnesota, a big brick building. "This is Angus MacFarlane up at . Did you know him?" "This was my outfit." Six horses. "This was my driving team." "This is the one where I'm twisting bannock." He's on his heels in the part of the picture he pointed to before. "A woman I used to mess around with." "What was her name?" "That I won't tell. I never tell ladies' names." It's dark. At the window there's a fine grey light but his black clothes and the smoked walls behind him darken the room. What is it about his face in his young pictures, with his brothers, the stupid vain blond young men. He still has the harmlessness but he shines, he's healthy and immoral. Is it his not having been a tamed man? Now it's time for coffee. A tobacco tin. He fumbles in the dark corner of the table for a spoon. Measures four teaspoons of coffee into the pot. At the stove takes a cup, rinses it, measures - measures? he's never learned to do it by eye? - four brimming cups of water. Puts a lid on the pot, takes a round off the stove, sets the pot onto direct fire. I glance into the front room. A south window and the end of an iron bedstead. Framed pictures. Blue and white linoleum, very old. Oilcloth on the table. He's set a cup in front of me. Goes into the back room, gets plastic bags, dirty. Spreads one over the bread. Changes his mind. Takes another, spreads it to cover all the loaves, then pats the others down over and around it. Goes again into the back room. A solid body, throwing himself unevenly. Black clothes and braces with Worldwide on them. Brings four small boards, weighs down the plastic with them. Takes the breadpan from the woodpile and goes into the back room with it. He's lifting it. Hangs it on a nail? Next to the window. It crashes down. Something has fallen with it. He's black in a dark space and his face holds the light. Lifts the lid, looks at the coffee. Pours me some. Where's his cup, does he have no more cups? He seems to be looking around. I get up and look in his wooden box, an apple box nailed above the table. Many cups. He goes into the back room, brings back half a loaf of white bread and a bread board. Looks closely at the bread board, holding it up. Cuts three slices, piles them and cuts through them. Takes the rest of the bread back. Sets out two plates. Throws spoons next to them. Brings the pan from the stove. Sits down. "Do you have milk in your coffee?" "Yes." Goes into the back room, opens the trap door in the floor, kneeling. Reaches down, brings up a tin. He's fumbling, cutlery sounds, in the dark corner. "There's an opener in here somewhere." I get up, see the tray, pull it off the table. A spoon worn halfway through, knives, forks, teaspoons. "Maybe it's here." Feels for it. "Yes." Opens the tin. Now he brings a cup for himself and pours coffee. "Have some sauce." Dried apples cooked with water and brown sugar. Butter in a jar. The bread's good. "Do you sell any of your pictures?" Nod. "Get a good price for them?" Nod. "Keeps you going?" Nod. He goes off in himself. "Did you ever do any trapping?" Shake. "There should be some weasels up at the creek, used to get a dollar for them, don't know what they go for now." He's good to look at. Without clean living, he's alright? He reaches for the milk, knocks it over. "Oh when a lady comes to see me I get nervous. But I'm seventy-nine so it isn't much to worry about." Laughs. He's healthier than my grandfather. The dirt on his neck and his wild beard. Has he got his wits? Yes and no. "Did you ever do any trapping?" Shake. "There'll be some martin at the creek, two fifty a skin. I guess a person could study up on ." "Chickens, it's the oyster shells, they used to send them up from the States, said they were oyster shells but the chickens wouldn't eat them." "I had catarrh one time, I think it was the poisons in the grain, you know it's real poison. I went to Edmonton to see the doctor. He told me come back on Monday. I went back on Monday. They took a little blood from every part of me, then they said there was nothing wrong with me. They didn't have to tell me I wasn't sick, I knew I was sick, but they couldn't dutect it." "And I thought I had ulcers too, because every morning I woke up with a raw stomach, but then somebody told me to drink four cups of hot water when I got up, and nothing with my meal, and four cups again after it, and that cured it. I mean I wasn't cured but I was better." "The chickens eat their eggs and they lay without shells. The ducks aren't like that, back there every spring eight or nine eggs, and they hatch out every one of them." A Depression story, he was up on the roof building the hall. I give Ezra a bit of bread. He reaches me another slice, "Give her some more." I give her a bit of it then offer the rest to him, sign him to give it to her. He does. He looks at me smiling appreciatively but he's faking it, I set him up for it. It's getting dark. I stand up. "Have another coffee? Well old Joe'll have one." Pours it. "But I'll show you out." Puts on his hat, goes out ahead of me to his old tractor. Shows the jar with orange stuff in it that he drained out of the engine. "I cranked her up for about half a day." Goes to the cutter box, takes out an orange rag with a stick. He's on the way back to his house, on his narrow path between small trees. I have to walk among them. I stop him and put out my hand. He opens into a big smile, shakes my hand firmly and many time. "You come again if you want to." Ezra and I go back up the lane in the dark. The fine little bridge. The road. A farmyard on the corner with trucks aligned. Organized. A windbreak, nine rows of trees, every row a different kind. Nobody goes into that thicket. A dog comes from the house. Ezra wags. There's a fire near the road, small wild fire moving through ditch grass. Other side of the road, horses moving. I hear ducks, then see them overhead. They're honking. Necks turning. When they've passed over, the wings' sound is more a squeaking. They break west, sounding alarmed. I like the fire. Bend over, scrape up some gravel to send the farm dog home. The wild little loose fire. This isn't the turning yet. A light ahead, stationary, rosy, reflected, fanning onto a surface from a light inside a trailer. The corner. Walk fast but now often disappear from the road. Come back when a car light shows, to call Ezra off the road. Grey track. Ezra vanishes into it. What do I smell. Not much. Why not. The dead poplar leaves earlier. Headlights again. Call Ezra off, stand still as they come around. A car. It stops beyond us. I get onto the road and walk again. The car thinks to reverse but I keep walking and it goes on. The drill rig's light a long way off. Headlights going east, the Wells' drive. Dark. It's a solid place in the grey. Ezra has gone ahead. Here's my car. Try to start it. It whirs out. Go in and start a fire. 6 First thought a grumble. Rice and cranberry breakfast. Walked 8 with Ezra. Empty mailbox. This odd bad luck. Miles over cultivated field different textures, some makes my feet sink in, the backyard of a farm and backyard of Valhalla Centre. 7:15 intense pain (T), then it turned to longing, then it thought of a reading. Cut its hair. Couldn't stand on its head. Singing practice. The writing. Only a little but it might be possible. Got out the poets. 7 Singing and fiddle exercise. Nordhagen to fix the tires. Cheque. Phoned - no. 6 driving to phone, headlights and big sweep up there. 7 again, beside myself, unable to do anything, suspension. 8:30 forcing myself to wait a little. Oh. Awkward, frightened and quickly better but it took a while to find her sadness. C: that released, and then flurried back better to see. E morning and night fever ache in limbs esp arms. 8 She [my mom] said he's been "terribly depressed," it's rebellion that worries him. Re-bellare to fight back, bellum war. Pleased to have got him. Informed about my pain this week. She said she's leaving it to the holy spirit. We ended laughing: it's his thing, it's what he's working on at the moment, at least he has some information now he didn't have before. And she's back in action. Proud. Loyal. Prow forward, valiant. Prowess advantageous. But the fright of damnation is still there. Using the machine wrongly. Went to look for the record and opened at it: [sketch dark moon] and Fenelloza language. Fever ache in neck head arms. - [don't know where this goes: It's pain again, here, can I write? No. And what's in it, what work is it, writing again. I used to do it confidently. Now it's broken even here and today, I am garbage and writing doesn't make me spend my life - spend my life wisely. Woke to fright of spending my life. Couldn't even remember how old I am, 33? Or 34? 33 still, it seems tonight. And is it 1978 or 79? Look on an envelope. - A tall old man sitting with my friends at the table. He didn't speak. We were peaceful. A survivor, not a father, not obsessed. His presence sealed me. Under my diaphragm it had stood too open. His silence closed me. In the seeding long grass back of the old farm, two planted rows of some domestic flower planted thick. At the near ends a round grandma sitting on a chair, flowers on her kerchief and apron. She said an artist planted them. He was twelve when she was seventeen and had liked her. It was near a house with antlers over the door. - We walked a mile and a half from the school bus on the highway. The bridge over the creek was half-way home, the hyphen of the walk. This half-way spot was where we located the fairies or gods. On the far side of the bridge, the home side, we'd set down our lunch pails and drop our jackets to slide under the barbed wire and follow cowpaths into the slough. The border of this zone was a row of black poplars - or water, or Russian, or balsam poplars - along the fenceline, where they liked the wetness of the ditch. At snow melt in April, when the ditches reflected sheets of sky and we were walking home on gumbo newly dry and showing light brown on the rut ridges like the sugaring edges on fudge, the poplar buds gave out a scent that came around us smelling of snow water, intelligent and goldy-green. At the center of the slough, touched into by paths only from the north and west, was a small space of open water, not very deep, knee deep. It was near the road but in deep invisibility in a ring of pasture willow standing thick in wet ground with paths deep-bitten between them and nettles in the underbrush. When I had my first camera at fifteen what I wanted to take a picture of was my sister wading there. The intuition was of a strong slim goddess whose sanctuary it must have been. On the north edge of this internal pond were spruce, the tallest of local trees, standing with sheltered dry ground under the sloped roofs of their branches. When we were back on the road after the summer, putting down our lunch pails and dropping our jackets to slide under the wire, there would be the spruce black as ever, the willows dropping yellow new moons on the black mud of the cow paths. In September the spruce room with its porch opening to the water would be warmed by the lower angle of sun, ceiling lit by fiery reflection off the water. A reading room. Gone in a book, with my back against the creaking trunk. East o' the sun and west o' the moon. Suddenly a branch crackles. A steer with his ears up, wearing a dirty red hide, has come for water, startled. Both startled. Inside this room, at the roots of the trees, were squirrel or mouse burrows, elf doors where we left gifts. A mushroom in a coat of jam wax given for a table. A bit of writing. Little stones. Small flowers, maybe one floret of fireweed. A bit of wood with a knothole. Some winter my father had a fantasy of moving our house to a ridge on the grain field east of the slough, bulldozing into the water, lining it with sand and having it as our swimming pool. I took his fantasy secretly and imagined building on that spot my own house, one small wooden room. When I was pregnant in my mid-twenties I came from another country to show the man this place among others. We were lying in a damp minty spot by the slough when he said he first tasted milk from my breasts. When I was in my country again, later, that bush by the creekside, because it had no cattle pastured in it now, had become rank, unpathed, impenetrable with nettle and mosquito. The next year I wintered in a farmhouse that had a room over the kitchen sealed off from the stairwell by a skin of brown paper. I slit the paper and went into the room, which was empty. When it began to be cold I brought from outside and set up in this dark brown peak-roofed unlined room, a circle of field stones I'd made in the grass. I intended to sit in the circle but seeing the stones there scared me so much I stayed away, and when I moved in spring I left them where they were. When Charlie Rheaume came back from Ponoka he lived alone in the house where he'd earlier lived with his wife and children. He'd go out with his shotgun and fire at the enemy airplanes that were interfering with his mind. One evening after a rain my brother took me out to see his place in a part of the country I didn't know. We had to leave the motorbike at the road and push in through to the house. Mosquitoes came up in swarms out of the wet grass. Windows gone, door ajar, not much to see. Two rooms sunk in grass. Soaked magazines, cookstove rusted with the oven door ripped off. Numbers written on the wall. In the other room an iron bed frame, cardboard boxes flattened on the springs. Around it on the floor, field rocks in the grey light, to be there standing around him lying in his thin long johns, there while he slept or lay awake.] 9 [Fly to Vancouver] Lying aching turning waiting for time to pass. The cold outside. Fevered practical thought. Will the car start. Will it be icy. Ezra is she too cold. Everything ready for hours. First putting myself into limbs, and the memories of bedroom, kitchen. Cold. Air ice. It starts, loaded warming. The backroad, seeing far across the country, the La Glace lights, driving without seeing much but light on the gravel, the errand, and M in the bathroom washing her face in a housecoat, intimate unknown life, Glenn Roland in his cap. Driving, I wanted to talk about flying. Lowly to talk to the boy businessman. Going up, the drift of snow in some places. Discontent, Time mag, watching my unhope. Trees especially, their heads seem to turn, those frosty ivory suspensions, the ball of tree and mountain lakes green, quartz. Lumbered parts making orders dead, not alive, except to see the city with red berries and yellow leaves, sun and Chinatown liveliness. Paul's liking the photographs. Fever again. But the photo mags grizzle me. She was thin black and white, glamorous, strange and I said "I must say I'm very glad to be rid of you." 10 Josie's beautiful work. With Riddington. He eagerly told and gave. [visited UBC anthropologist Robin Riddington to ask about his work with the Beaver people in my country] I looked for the black and white woman but she was asleep. 11 Tequila and the one warming and loving as rarely. The lovely images like how it is with. Round parts and straight. And going to sleep and sometimes she answers and sometimes not. And is quiet but gives enough to keep me unfrightened of her beauty. - 7/11 at night when I magnetized toes and arms, the release is frightening, I saw altman's two movies, the red hood dwarf, thought I'd let in a scary thing, remembered more of the atmosphere of the movie, prescience, but couldn't see anymore I think it was at the right thigh that it came wanted some help night woke arms hurting metamorphosis dream a lioness on a leash, j and I like sisters, it was her lion, she was afraid of it, it had been ezra? only now remembered the lion - earlier knew about a journey, I was undecided about whether to go, and in the end came down the stairs to deck 15 just as she was boarding, joined her with only an old dirty canvas bag, unzipped, in it a towel? and hairbrush? that was about all clothes, an orange or green skirt, it was better with lower part we were in china? top of a doubledeck bus (bush) dimly looking at streets, I realized I'd noticed hardly anything, or knew hardly anything and so memorized the color of the buses, so I could tell rhoda? when she asked orange and grey? when I sexed I imagined c gentle on my back with her head laid on my left shoulder blade the love she makes in me, a poppy I tried to feel how it is with j, it's solider, it's denser coming made freer images, a curly wave loosed in the cunt, memories opened without words - how it is here rumour of power more than what we can see around in humans danger of becoming too strong is held back by personal taboos by virtue of the monster who came in, lose will and judgment with the first transformation in childhood vision cured when another sings the medicine song to overcome the emerging monster one has to know the mythic role that will come forward if you signal it 'if I know something     I know it helps lots to know something but you have to watch all the time. people are scared of you' life in the bush and life in the camp too strong when everyday has too much of animal-social   wechuge role must be played by the logic of one whose taboo has been violated it consumes unless a benevolent power once again befriends fire the symbol of camp life ma yine his song/medicine náachi you don't make claims for your medicine until you've demonstrated ability to hunt, live past middle age life motion personal image, social image, 'the world', event a medicine fight waged in dreams between the animal friends of the participants misfortune and fortune and their explanations ask to see your enemy in a dream   "You're going to be very strong."   "You're saying that because you know you've given me something."   decision and orientation the inner story   if you take water then everything will get away from you and you will be a person again     10 days, 15 days parent starts to worry heads pointed to sunrise with unbroken bush for future reveals the plan, bigger one outside events recognized as showing of plan whose form was felt in dream/internal vision quest, dreaming and ritual the earth diver swans return to the same body 'everyday' at centre of   look after the dreamer, look after her dreamers have symbolically experienced their own death to follow the giant animals instead of running away the overhead drawing local / planetary form or image first / then experience a round hole and a wheel in it silver and black phase transformations of follow the feeling of life culture shock     feelings of incompetence disorientation and unreality when children are sent into the bush they experience directly the power of giant animals sent underground at all time the space around a person with recognized medicine actively represents the quality of his/her knowledge sun and moon are a person traveling through the sky bringing into being the days, months and seasons wolverine man power over traps - when people feel themselves trapped they go to him snares: to go back on your own tracks and lift the snare over your head, rather than blindly struggling forward trap medicine nagata a feeling that something bad was going to happen distortion 3 day and night ceremonies   ghost was to retrace to the point before distortion began it is like going up a sun's line tunes start as high as one can sing and go down to the end of each breath the scout going back going ahead   'with you sometimes, I feel like I'm right on the border between the present and the future' sits forward 'yes' - When man and animal do meet it is a moment of transformation like the moment of meeting in the vision quest, when the child enters the animal's world of experience and is devoured by another realm of consciousness. 12 Moving. Restless, refusing. - how you sit in friezes where you are in dreamtime I think it was as the young man under the bridge   went down looking for a site found the young man a junkie ate big blackberries speaking to him made I up the bank lost a boot to him and didn't dare go back for it thought about him all day hobbling without the boot   to meet t I have to go into my weakness and incompletion   oh sister when I come to lie in your arms you should not treat me like a stranger our father would not like the way that you act and you must realize the danger   oh sister am I not a brother to you and one deserving of affection and is our purpose not the same on this earth to love and follow his direction   we grew up together from the cradle to the grave we died and were reborn and then mysteriously saved   oh sister when I go to knock on your door don't turn away you'll create sorrow time is an ocean but it ends at the shore you may not see me tomorrow Bob Dylan 1976 O sister on Hard rain to find out what it means to look body looking after itself world   borrow a voice to think: the I can't find herself, thoughts don't continue, I stop them in their sentence, I don't make firmness, the terms are wrong, the location is wrong I am in the wrong place, (she found a place) this isn't making heaven, this is waiting and confuses itself with moralizing comfort of confession: simple one: traveler, I wanted to know why I gave myself to so many who - but gave? the tension will kill me trying to make up a version we seem to be programmed to keep each other caught objects / décor / landscape the beautiful the one who wanted things to be beautiful the one who doesn't know [sketch*] what is here can people combine to make one of them stronger censorship in the journal, what a high soul would say I want to know I seem to believe that if I choose according to an inner voice, I'll go straight, and that everything else has to be held off navigation 13 Evening T and C. R at New Diamond. Tough. Josie downstairs. J for eve. Reading anthropology. 14 Bought Kawabata and was in him. Stephanie. 15 In the flat. The Playboy. Heat. Moving boxes down. J's basement stage. Indian dinner and liveliness. 18 Tacking plastic. 19 Spent going to C being sent away. Coming back and going away. And House of sleeping beauties. And sad. The wall with shadows in middle and from both sides. 22 J came after the house was dark, I sent her away. Slept. Sandy inherited money and that would bring them together. J said yes you've been finding me out little by little. Morning, she naked over/beside saying You're going to hate me. Telling D the dreams. Paul and Diana shouting downstairs about the heat bill. Jean Waite, more of the face than the essential, getting her to talk about grasses and sedges balance, courtesy, liking, playing loose toward her and showing the garden. Walking Granville looking. NFB the magnetic field and solar wind shadow, picture going purple to show field. A dragonfly nymph split at the shoulder and dragonfly crawled out head and shoulders its first self still holding onto the stalk. It crawled out more and felt its weight, struggled to bend up and grasp its standing skin, while the last of the tail came out. And then stood above its skin, two the same size, facing same way. Began to open its wings as sun dried them. Crab onions ginger / all the café, an even existence in it. December 3 Trapped panic. Close to bliss. Fight. Drunk. Awake night. [notes from some magic text] Omnipresence: the power to communicate is in the nature of substance. Solar plex telepathy - feeling. Solar plexus feeling plate Desire. It attracts outward thought back to the sender, or sets up a block to receiver, or if desire is stopped, inhibited desire is a wall. Telepathic - reflective thought and a steadfast love - love-energy - send out the idea on a stream of love. Occupied with mental problems and encased in thoughtforms In mental, throat mainly, also heart. Throat main centre of creative but heart and throat must be used together. When it's mental pressure and makes helpless it's black magic "rendering him negative and with a weakened will." Right effort leaves strengthened will, intenser light, more lively body, astral freer from glamour. Love that guards from love of power keeps the integrity. 4 Intense tension. J's story. 7 Met Daph on street. Café. Messiah - the street. J coming fr - Vision before sleep A flower refocusing 8 Visions before sleep. She came home. Tarot from Esther. The tarot made us merry and interested because it said we were meant to be together jubilant. Evening to Daphne's, she said she didn't want to go, and quickly wanted to leave, having got what she'd come for and not able to get intellectual. Pound such a master. Daphne's depression and showing a sad face. I was glib and acted married. The images began on the way home - wine? From then I was turned away from J, she said it was because I'd got something I wanted although it wasn't real. - went to daphne and by beginning was able to speak in long complex sentences that gathered the fragments and so has seemed to dispose of them once when she looked at me the sensation of her brightness, light, moving wide life was so strong and so enlivening I wondered about the deadness of j's surround about burnaby, I couldn't write. someone. she invited me, I came because we had some time trusting ourselves, stiff with uncomfort in the luxury, disapproval, and changing to tolerate it, imagining harmony she became tyrannical 9 She went to meet Stell and phoned to say she wanted to come home and work. I began to work, reading the tarot book, for the first time. Found N-W. Better looking. [Paul Case 1947 The tarot Builders of Adytum] 10 Wake not wanting to tell my dream, turned off. Back to Hastings, a rebellion, wildness, in the afternoon trying Daphne thinking Cheryl. D was at C's fighting, smoked and was anxious, oblivious, working out soul instructions thinking about Burnaby and my confusion learning myself in the self dislike of it, she went off cross in her car to see Sandy, I to Daphne where there was a clean flood and then afterwards a murk over how she's doing better than me. (Trudy said she was threatened.) Phoned her at 1:30 to say I was staying and she could come but she wouldn't and I to sleep in Paul's bed trying to be moved. She to work on crystals and symmetry but not sleep because her body missed me. Next day disorganized with fatigue but she wouldn't come to sleep in Paul's bed. 11 Will you help me today? Not being with her, and irritated she wouldn't be with me in the last time, came to her oblivious revengeful not expecting how crazy - different shirt and perfume - broke bits, made foolish plans, couldn't grasp it, wouldn't trust me, hanging on, wildly hurting and I couldn't help until after dinner which I bitterly paid, haranguing her that we don't recognize each other's souls (effortlessly), she collapsing with fatigue I at last could do something and frightened challenged was I also too crazy? finished the room, hung her window, redeeming. But our competition, the misery, and at home following each other, both vengeful and reproachful, talking about breaking with each other, the tension of this separation, in bed, unable, except I said "I wish I had beaten you more." Couldn't see or feel her except sometimes in the desperation, and was she acting that? We play games a lot and don't know. Occasional sanity and then the prison again. I went on about Sandy and intimacy. 12 We wake she reaches out of the floor bed. I can't see or feel her and am trying to be conscious of her aberration, we have to work, watching closely the bad and better jokes, always knowing where the other is. She packs up in the pingpong room, I wash sinks, surfaces, the pain's very strong, she gives me the crystal. That makes me weep with sorrow to be among Stell, her mother, Sandy, Shirley etc, but the lovely box, nothing can make us less awkward. We're pretending to give each other up forever, not knowing, angry, cleaning, I have to help her think, she almost abandons her blue teeshirt, I'm undermined with a sense of failing, she says we're angry with ourselves because we've failed but we aren't sure we have - she goes away in pain to finish packing, I smoke and tell myself I'm not desperate, with Diana, feeling out from a distance what a truthful presence would be, feeling atmospheres around comments (Richardson), and watching the calmness of ability in the world, Esther tying string saying "I don't know how I came to be doing this," Ezra and how glad to see her, and taking over and helping, the wheeled baggage, she sat and peeled her orange with an arm around me, that was sweet, and at the airport sat with me nagging. "It will seem like a dream, I mean the twelve years." [J going home to HK after 12 years in Canada] - last night, the basement, lights for her stage, she was unable, gradually I could see how to do it, and, already defending, she's contemptuous of me with tools, she was awkward with hers, I was glad to be able to do her work. and esther, tying knots, they'd got together, esther's girl was gone, the small middle-aged face. these lives accomplishing themselves in the middle of all mystery, there won't be a simplicity, more of the struggle of concepts, more of 'modern life', figuring out - I have been, in burnaby, submerged in a current of figuring out, when I saw how much it hurt you to go I began to think we will be together again some time, still in struggle, never easier than this, and that we're more together than we know, in our struggling, trying to find, last night when I said those mornings were happy and flowed and began to cry she locked her arms around me from behind and cried too, the terrible grief that you didn't want to be in my place with me mixed, fluster and good thinking you want to write   [letter] Tuesday night, Paul's house So closeby, the crush of detail, wanting to be a hero in your/my eyes, wanting to try out being the worst most unheroic lump, and think think about it all, misery on the bus but the moon came up a white pale circle on the edge of a mountain, did you see it? And more misery here but something interested when stirring the pages of work, Diana wants to get up early and take me to the train, you're safe. I sent you blessings. How we complained not wanting to be imprisoned, while we sat on the verge of such open time. 13 [I take the train from North Van to Prince George and then a bus to Hythe] Waking before alarm, out of a good sleep. Boxes, with D through night lights over bridge, moon, irritated looking for station on north shore, early, sat in the freight office, the dawn orange and steam through plate glass, thinking about whether I'm interested in my image, the drab middle-aged one, proud of inconspicuous spirit, heavy. Frost, still flat sea and still humped dark hills in it, the children and their keepers, watching criticizing, reading a little Dorothy Richardson but thinking thinking about being, thoughts moving still stoned abstract feeling out, the holy life, Krishnamurti. Feeling into the exchange a little intense visibility of those in the car, not much to feel of the mountains - still and queer. But in late afternoon, past Lillouett, the sight of deep gorge black and silvery white, at the bottom pale gold river shine very wide from high over it down to cleared round-edged white fields. Reading Richardson. Dark hunkling down to sleep getting a little lively when a new conductor came, old-fashioned. Prince George the stunned taxi driver and making pleasantness with clerks, not good, but to speak in the bus suddenly thought of the driver ahead with bodies twisted into seats, behind, a drawing. Unseen moonlight on thin snow-hung spruce. Pleasant sleep all night, dreamed a war veteran showing me crystals, I wanted to take them home to study but saw they were in formaldehyde, rotting and stinking, he a maimed one. Thinking of J's disabilities a mild thoughtful intermittent pain.     part 5 up north volume 1: 1978-1979 june-january work & days: a lifetime journal project