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14 December Valhalla
Woke and sat up the instant Hythe came, felt my mechanism working well,
as all this time, charmed. Then walking in bright air bitter on one ear,
a man who said religion lied about hell, a father would not burn his children.
At M's seeing Luke's photo, cried, the sorrow from underneath, his mouth
in a foolish grin. Unable to stay with M but her sympathy lifting me to
laugh. He said hi on his way through.
15
"To my sweetheart on her fifty-third birthday, from her one and
only lover boy, Eddie" in a shaking hand.
Was most of the day with Frank, sometimes heard his voice, and then at
one moment in the snow light stubble, as in the child's house was like the
one who got his letters.
16
In dreams I'm alone traveling without emotion.
Reading through Castaneda's first, remembering the marvel of first time,
thinking of everyone changed by it, its grip because it spoke to the hero.
Who doesn't lie, stays young, knows how to stay in a strong position
and goes through fear, is only bound by rules of existence, not people or
social life, has adventures and finds own way to live without shame.
-
At the dump looking at objects feeling the lives of unknown other people,
town people. A bottle with liquid still in it. Every school day on the way
home it was on the right down a dirt ramp of cracked ground. A trench north-south
on the west wide of the unused road allowance, fields on either side behind
barbwire fences. A rutted track, rainwater standing in the ruts. Toward
the back where the strip went into the willow brush, car bodies. The willows
taller than children. Mud and grass under them, rooms between them.
Reading comics. Little orphan Annie.
Standing at the edge of the trench full of greasy water reading a True
story magazine surprised to feel hot in the seat. It was called that,
didn't have a more particular name, the quiet place that feels sharp when
it needs to pee. This feeling wider and hot.
Forgot it and found it again later in a True story magazine. Noticed
it there when he grabbed me to spank me. Cold wet down the insides of brown
winter stockings. Enraged and sobbing.
There might have been letters to say whose pile it was. Angens. The La
Glace people in houses that have an upstairs. What they eat. Pineapple tins
with a smell in them. Greasy stuff in a bottle. Mayonnaise.
Studying what they've finished with, clothes. A car seat, drag it back
to the house in the willows. Wood box with an enamel washbasin. Chipped
plates.
East into our father's pasture tins, paper, litter pushed by wind and
spring flood until it had got pressed immovable into the willow brush.
The willows with cowpaths cut nicely under and between them. Cows, sometimes
the bull. Steers, calves, the horses, on the other side of the wire.
The sense, standing there in open land, of breeze, a hill to the north
- a long hill like the bank of a lake, steep, brome-grassed. The strong
sun from beyond the willows and then the lake. Kinderwater's barley field
and the creek running alongside it, the road. The slow private time between
the highway and home.
Standing. Grass brown like it is now. Wind. The sun. The time of day.
My companions Judy and Paul. Not doubting that we knew it the same way.
Running, finding, showing. Alone with the thought or sense of the jar's
life. Feeling La Glace over the fields that way, and the house that way,
its roof showing over the hill. Once on a Saturday he was working on the
roof and could see to call us. Or they went to the car and we heard the
horn and knew it meant dinnertime. Maybe we told her what we found, maybe
we saved her having to tell us it was dirty.
Some things not to be picked up. The smell of that stuff in the bottle,
hair oil, I can almost smell it.
The piled tins, chipped cups for the house in the willows. A good kettle,
hold it to the sky, see light.
When it rained, sitting inside a truck cab without wheels reading magazines,
looking at pictures of the world, eager. The Star Weekly, Look.
Palm tree, ocean liner, princesses, soldier. Beauty bodies, the way they
dress, what they say to each other.
Sinful people brought beer bottles and snuff boxes, round cardboard boxes
with a fine smell. Whiskey bottles. Sinful lives from the town, those people
better than us, better richer but not better smarter.
-
Here with the snow idling between me and the red willows, putting snow
light into the room. The cold linoleum in the morning is then.
17
All day in feeding the fire and reading letters.
Clear brilliant death, cold.
23
Sunset 4:17, sunrise 8:50 AM. [Olson house]
I go out to drag back fenceposts.
Since Vancouver I spend noon to 2 or 3 AM oblivious in reading the past,
fire concerns, remembered marvel.
24
He heard the clock stop [1974].
Twilight went looking for a tree. The road drifted high but she plunged
through, hands light on the wheel let her keep the tracks. Small tree on
the fence allowance. Simple spruce smell.
Supper at Helmer's, the grey brother and sister and their trouble.
25
A fine day, blue and yellow on the curtain and outside.
Get stuck and dig out, the radiator steams.
-
- inner preparation for approaching
- and the pause for after effects
li - principles of order, markings in material
26
I'm the princess and have married the prince, come
downstairs with a wine bottle that slips out of my hand. I ask the servants
to take it, they don't, when it falls it stains my dress. They say I lost
the power to hold the prince when I took his gifts, the beautiful dress.
The butterfly prince. When I was poor and proud I was loved.
27
Crystallization on windows, the terrible rattling of the heater.
28
Helmer "We've already had more winter than we had last year."
[willow snow] [stone snow ripples]
[snow claw]
30
It was down to -30
The dream of a house with grapevines and dead bees.
31st Sunday
Arden and Charlie. In Hythe the white smoke of the town lying flat, white
roofs and roads and dark blue above.
Legion Hall dance.
1 January 1979
New moon has old in her arms clearly visible.
The big london journal, she was bright and moved fast, I liked her. Very
multiple and inventive, studying, freemoving and exact. She wasn't afraid.
2
-25. Beaverlodge. Beautiful shining smoke exhaust and swirling snow on
the black road. Brilliant light.
Afternoon backed directly into ditch. What did I do that for? The black
man and his dog (Tony Tiller of Philadelphia living in a little house in
Valhalla Centre). Oh maybe that's why. I wave. And subsequently bean soup
and help with wood, and we shout about how it is alien here. Of the storewoman,
"She throws the change into my hand and won't look at me." I tell
him how it is to hold off the drunk men. He says Hwoooahw!
Gestures are so amplified. He makes ease around him but I couldn't take
a lot of it, watching him over-explain, not guessing me, again and again
making me wait, thinking slowly, or explaining slowly, looking inside and
spelling out the current theories. He made a reflection of my rumination
that shamed me.
He loved one of the complex pictures of Sarah
in London.
3
-25. Long walk to the marsh. Sky, clean color diffusing up, intense at
the white and going through orange to dark blue. Before the sun set, the
longer fencepost shadows were turquoise.
Drifts' shapes. Coyote tracks running through and on deep snow. Rabbit
tracks at a grain pile. Some fast flickering birds in small scatters.
Saw the coyote a big black one running between orange sky and me in next
field. We stopped and looked.
Eyes tired, have read all day for two weeks.
4
Found myself in a contrived but lovely position camera
took me to - moon, growing white in intense blue sky.
Rereading the Dunne-za material. Then rushed out, an owl suddenly seen
on a post, big. When it flew it was white close to the ground. Another small
bird sat chirping on the roof spine of a granary.
Through the fields behind where Charlie lived. The sky intensening. The
refound deep underfoot (blue) sound of walking on drifts.
-
in the hotel room
the smell of hospital bedding
[on scrap paper written in the Sexsmith Hotel after crumpling the right
fender against the RR sign, sliding on the icy uphill bit of road at the
corner]
Driving slowly for the fragile engine. The southwest. That's winter sunset.
It's in ripples, wooly, continuous from far to here, dark orange. A strange
thing, shadows the shape of mountain range go up into the orange. The sun's
gone down behind Vancouver.
5
Absent, superstitious.
Chinook: "The mountains were standing way up."
Alone in a day looking for the way it works.
Driving fast, pushing. Just past Epps suddenly it slowed - what? - down
into second, spun smooth around and into the ditch. Went into the credit
union and borrowed $200 'for car repairs.' To Sexsmith, cautiously, liking
the beautiful evening. Should I take the highway? Caution, but at the railway
corner realize I'm on the curve too fast. Last week someone said "never
the brakes." Feel the curve, sit it out. The RR post on the right.
Try to steer but it's going to happen.
Hard crash. Chin into the steering wheel, head bumped too. The post is
over, I'm in deep snow.
Cried in sight of the café woman.
Seismic workers in the bar.
6
Waking once in the hotel room, sensation of having in dream vision seen
a partitioned rectangle in shadow like the one thrown by the window streetlight.
It was a revelation of what I want to know, new again. I don't understand.
Had forgotten it until I wrote. Waking seeing into the dark parts of a day.
Encounters in real life, someone to pull out my fender. When I turn on
lights, there's only one. Drive slowly. Green sky and blue snow. Wide open.
Grey bush. Black road. Yellow on the snow.
The seismic crew. Liking the party manager at first sight made me bold.
He had bright strong eyes, beautiful clear face in a slob body. Shaking
his head, "I can't do it."
7
Sunday all today a little haunted by you. Sad, is that simple lonely
or what, very little in this day, at first a rush through housework, fire,
making big pancakes in the cold kitchen, sun. The bright afternoons, reading
optics of the landscape.
Pulled to the fire where on the end of a log an angel is making a sign.
I was stirred by the detail, way the ridges of its cut blew through the
figure, drew it.
Chopped a lot of wood in the dark, door open behind.
At Bernice's how excited they are by Joe, Charlie, dog stories. Wildness
draws and enlivens.
Asked Translations for a message from you:
- having no hope at all
-
that man who is base of heart
- can bear his part of wit
-
into the light of it
-
- not to delight, but in an ardour of thought
- that the base likeness of it kindleth not
Moonlight strong shadows across drifts.
The open night.
- so hath man craft from fear
-
in such his desire
- to follow noble spirit
-
- save that perfection fails, be it but a little
Glossy tinkle of the fire sometimes.
Excitement of Minnaert telling the color sequence of a sunset.
A root hump covered with snow slightly smoking.
8
It was a white day. A layer of snow stars airy piles. [snow writing]
[snow writing 2]
Waiting to hear from Energenics, don't want to call anyone else. Tension
drove me out to the post office and then the difficult dangerous journey
to Buffalo Lakes. He recognized me in the dark and put a hand on my shoulder
and called me by name and I had to realize my tough projection is still
not working and never will unless I make a foolish exaggeration of it.
The way home seemed safer. When passing we slow down and the right side
grabs.
9
I am sad and lonely, and not interesting, restless, pathetically angry
with J, went stumbling through the dim greyblue to the bush, flung her crystal
into a forked tree. Finding where no snow gathers under roofs of the spruce.
Many tracks into it.
At Helmer's on the phone wrangling with an executive who said "I
won't fire a man to hire a woman that's one thing I can tell you for sure."
In the snow fields very pale very high moon through thick cloud. Reading
the Sufis, rising pain. C's here, the Sufis bring her and I want to put
my head on her knee, wanting a drug to open me into simple love. Howled.
It's January desperation.
Big wind came at night.
The voice structures speaking against each other.
Wondering about my superstitions, we were lost in omens, and that's the
openness, which is alright except for anxiety.
I had no other objective than that of seeking
solitariness, overcoming selfishness, fighting passions, trying to clear
my soul, to complete my character.
such thoughts are useless
they're made by fear
every position has a rationalization
the pain of failing at anything especially the loves and their balance
-
The first time through the Sufi book I surged up hopeful and hungry.
This time it's as if enlargement has failed me and left me worse than before,
disoriented and not knowing how to move forward.
- What is this exile I'm forcing.
- What's the pressure to 'work.'
- It's just that I want to serve goodness.
Oh deepness I loved you and was so afraid in you and can I come back
to you better prepared.
10
I had given myself to staying the winter, then the pickup with wood and
two embarrassed men confirmed it. I don't know how they came to deliver
it today, I was rereading J's letter when I heard the approaching crunch,
growing louder, of how it is when a pickup is braking up to the porch.
When I got out of bed this morning the sensation oh this is the right
waking, this cold and this right light.
-
[letter to Jam]
Opening the box, this time not expecting even enough to want, seeing
it was your writing, something tiny fell into place, it was like a little
tick, in the diaphragm I think, something moved sideways.
I saw everything you sent. Rooms and streets. When you quote your mother
I hear her, I love the way she said "In fact I would say you are very
well born" with the last three words spaced out, her accent.
I've been in grief and oblivion, wrote once and burned, didn't feel welcomed,
needed to hear from you. But forgave the instant the letter was there.
A little spruce wore the moon crystal for Christmas. Yesterday I struggled
to the marsh, went to the heart of it and flung it up into a forked tall
spruce, to be an eye, a radio, that no one knows. It was nightfall on a
white overcast day, coyote tracks. When I went into the bush there was blue
twilight and when I came out it was darker. The snow was deep outside the
bush but in the centre the ground was bare. [1992]
It was yesterday I thought of a winter white mist in Vancouver the first
winter there. What was beautiful was the way things materialized close and
vivid, a bird swooping in and out of visibility very close up, colors, meeting
a red pullover on the sidewalk. Bright and granular.
Lately the order of events has puzzled me. On Friday morning I dreamed
a man looking into my car said it runs too hot, with the motel room it will
cost $2000 to fix it. I said I'd do without the motel. He said in that case
$210. When I woke it was warm, a chinook overnight. Went for the mail, none,
drove on toward Sexsmith to do the laundry. Just past Epps on the La Glace
road the car suddenly lost compression and when I geared down spun sweetly
into the ditch full of snow with steam blowing and hissing from under the
hood.
Towed into La Glace. The mechanic found the rad mouth blown off. When
he checked he found that the heat gauge has been working all along, and
they failed to find out the engine was overheating because they took its
temp in the rad, which was cool because the water wasn't circulating. Water
pump.
Rad mouth soldered back on, crept slowly toward Sexsmith with a red,
plowed, sky behind me. Coming into Sexsmith, dusk, a sharp curve over the
tracks. I knew I was too fast into it, had been feeling out every move,
but something was absent at the wrong moment. There was ice, banked, uphill.
Knew not to brake. Slid sideways at the top of the turn. Sudden stop, the
RR post, chin and top of the head hurting, the accident sensation of something
suddenly changed irrevocably. When I looked, the right fender was smashed
up against the tire and the RR sign broken off.
Towed into Sexsmith, have to stay overnight at the hotel. Bacon and eggs
in the café, where the Chinese woman said "I thought maybe you
go to Hong Kong." She was watching television but kept an eye out for
me when I cried for the prettiness of my car.
During the night I woke suddenly and saw a rectangular shadow of window
and streetlight lying over the big wall mirror. A strong sense somehow that
the shadow rectangle was a central message. It was as if that waking continued
a dream and repeated its message.
In the morning had the fender pried up and drove to a seismic crew. Asked
for a job. Didn't get it.
Then Valhalla and your two letters.
Now it's Thursday noon.
This country no longer frightens me. It was partly the you in me, you
know - do you know? - how much I was you, and how that disorients me when
I don't know it's happening. Not only that, but it's being open to you puts
me in dangers I'm not used to. Alone there are other dangers, contraction
not dilation.
On New Years Eve went with Charlie, Arden and another drunk to the dance
in Hythe. Wouldn't go unless Charlie gave me the keys. Drank ginger ale
and watched the pioneers with contempt I remember from school parties. The
thrill that night was driving the pickup home, 5 drunks, big blue-black
4 AM, so cold that white smoke lay flat by the white roofs, wheels crunching
loudly.
I like to be you but it strains me. If we lived together that would be
the hardest. We focus into detail in such a way that ordinary movements
become interesting but difficult and I love that but we'd get to dislike
each other just to shut it off. I could have a home with you if I had another
one. if not I don't think I could bear it. Even in London it was partly
that the intimacy cuts me.
And you and I both have some good rugs. And your objects not offending
me is a wonder. But the parallel life, for me, is only possible if I have
a bed and table somewhere else. We could do it in Hong Kong if I had money.
What I need from C is to embody who I love/admire in her, I mean, to
bring it into my body, and sometimes to bring my lonely pilgrim to her to
be seen, because neither of us knows anyone else like us in that. Also some
body tuning which is also moral, or has been.
11
Some artists their work seems to be to create
a whole new world with each piece, some artists their work seems to be making
one world again and again with different points of entry.
The scolding man in Calgary, even his odd prolonged refusal, and the
morning scene of old Jenny, Helmer and Bernice. Natural. She said 'Hopping
and jumping, such a to-do,' looking, pale eyes and whiskers. All their pyjama
morning, Helmer's soft face.
And then opened the box to see a letter. While opening one, another.
Had overwhelming pleasantness for the native people after that. Wrote for
the rest of the day, not display, patchy sharing, stiff at first.
14
-35 they say.
At sunset can see the mountains, they seem to be rising.
I've been wrestling 'my' analogizing, it's the theological form insisting
in me and I've been just stopping.
Nearly every night I've caught a strange thinking but not been able to
recover it.
15
Listening to Don Giovanni again and again.
Sitting in moonlight. A few clouds begin to come from the west.
The intelligence in a work is there implicit, Kawabata.
16
Early after not sleeping up dressed chopping wood in black coat green
toque blue mittens checked collar black sweater blue jeans yellow boots.
Watching the southeast, mildly sunrise then spreading. The bulldozed line
in the west field went bright pink and the tops of trees in far clumps were
lit orange, brushy.
Hiding between Helmer and Bernice in the beautiful morning, each crotchety
and I was happy there.
In the mailbox it was stuffed. Don typing badly and speaking simply.
Daphne anxious. Diana's backyard love and Paul laughing.
- asterismos a constellation
- astrologos star discourser
Lying down edge of visions, scared, not badly.
Chinook. Walking at one, the open field called, between the grove and
creek it opened wide.
The call is like this: suddenly feeling myself there, zipping there,
like dreaming it first.
Walking in that direction the bush called too. Moon in high up lovely
brown space among soft clouds.
Alone alone in it.
Am a little too high.
-
[letter to Jam]
After midnight walking SE in a field, I found how a place calls. There's
a sudden inner elastic whup. I felt myself there, a half mile away
between creek and the bush where a broad corridor in moonlight seemed to
go on for miles, and then instantly back.
Stood still next to the bush and gradually came out of grey thoughts
to hear wind and feel the configurations of trees. The moon was high in
a lively mass of soft clouds, in a brown silkiness.
Hearing wind: that is to say, hearing trees, certain groupings.
Then the bush called and I answered that one, went in among. Soft deep
snow with many lines of tracks going through wooded and clear. The moonlight
color, privacy of the time of night. In the field being able to move any
direction, and being able to stand still because of chinook warmth.
Snow's melting on the roof. The snow has a sagged surface, when I go
out the door, a delicious smell. Traced it to the woodpile, jackpine. There've
been no scents.
Afternoon sleeping, I was saying to Carmichael (awake) "I want to
look at you" and then I was in a dark room, daylight at a window, looking
at two wet green pear-shapes human-sized on a perch. Looked around for his
wife and saw something the size of a hat-rack with a bag tied over its head.
I realized where I was and pulled out to examine it, and then was scared.
Oddly the dreamer herself goes everywhere mostly fearlessly. It is bringing
her into this world that scares.
17
Walking. When it went blue outside didn't know where to go. South on
the field. Hesitating, went to the bush of last night, in, and came to an
opening. Lay down to look at the tree's branch-brush, then see above a field
pale blue, porous, then the tree tops' dangling shapes swaying down. Lying
looking into the sway. After a while the lovely surprise of an orange fire
at the white line
Fine crackling soughing branches and the beautiful particled sea below.
A vertigo. Loved it and coveted it for the movie but was afraid of it.
The snow is sinking, came into the pan with a different feel and sound.
Copied the snake poem for Daphne. It's smart, rough, don't know how far
back that person is and whether to work on her work.
The chinook made a wild energy.
18
Just a little work, eager, among the papers, threw out wires and radio
and others, an intoxication in details made them and this one tears through
only keeping what's mysterious and charming. But don't know what to do with
that. And we are both foolish thinking something can be made in papers.
And I'm scorning myself some.
In moon wane does crumminess rule.
19
Open Hegel, it's full.
Driving, shining road, carefully. Crystalline sky. Saw a white cubic
granary in the snow against a pale sky.
[letter]
The beautiful run of flame.
Drifts are shaped like water things. Walking on them has an echo from
some distance under the feet.
Have felt the fluidity of the air, once in a certain spot, only one spot,
the air was wavering as it does with heat, that's when I felt its diamond
clarity.
The sky's where the life is. Opal glass, suffusions. In one of my books
there's a 2-page description of the sequence of color change in a sunset,
and why. And of sunrise and why it's different.
Behind the row of spruce a most delicate pink fading up from the white
line.
There aren't those fire dawns now, sunsets much less intense and clear
than in autumn.
Sometimes the fire has a tinkle like very fine glass breaking. Do you
remember that? [Jam's tiny writing: yes.]
-
Saturday. Yeah! It was -40 last night (Centigrade and Fahrenheit). This
afternoon in bright sun it's still -32 and I'm going for a walk. Oh ice
air I'm not scared 'a you.
The glue bottle has frozen.
-
Talked to you while walking north along the creek. The north field that
rises in stubble, without bushes, clean up to the north sky, had such delicate
sunset light on it. Never think of this as a dark sky now, even at night
it's swimming light, and a magpie had pink wings.
A district here is called Northfield.
Three houses have burned in this district this winter, and tonight there
was fire somewhere southeast.
20
Soft white snowfall. Warm.
- your vested interest is so strong
- please I want to be a man too -
-
- deeper than that I want to be a loved woman
- and as deep as that I want to be a writer
-
- it's harder to say the second than the first
-
- the two submersions
- god's lock on the cunt prevents them both
something made itself here
21
Intoxication but it can't focus. That came from looking at the roads
of the sun diagram. And then the pleasure of fantasy and then the responsibility
of work and its dread, trying to figure out what would be not evil
tutoring the senses to be his guide through
the maze of life and imagination
and then to risk himself beyond such seeing,
such hearing as he discovers possible, and try the finer labyrinths opened
by touch, smell, taste
"But I know how to tell one o'clock, straight down the road."
Walking out in white mist. At Dolemo's Hulda's beautiful. Often I leave
them disoriented. Arrive also, sitting at the table wondering if I really
need to speak.
22
[letter]
Last night an ice fog. I walked to Dolemos in white, I could see a slight
darkness in the two tracks and fenceposts, little trees, on either side.
Nothing else, no lights. When I left to walk home a few hours later the
fog had deposited itself an inch deep on every branch. I set the red candle
under the caragana bush closest to the east windows. Then I could sit inside
looking at candlelight on the thick frost bush and the surface of the snow.
Even the snow had deep frost crystallized on it.
And this morning was remarkable, overcast, but high up a little ivory
sun. The bushes along the creek, white, and the brush on those northern
hills where it's usually blue, white, with pale green in the sky margin.
I was looking south just after getting out of bed and saw what seemed
to be a cloud moving through Flaten's bush, the one past the road south
of here. When it got to the eastern edge of the bush it kept going and then
another one started a little lower. It was a little local wind stripping
the frost. A minute later it was taking white off the shed roof in a movement
like fire around a log, twining.
When I'd made the fire I went out with the camera but it was too late,
even the hills were blue again.
Today's working was like intense nervousness. Something was spinning
too fast to grab the work right. Intoxication, but I couldn't direct it.
It turned driving into fear.
Last night I learned something: did yoga working on the neck and upper
back muscles, and then going to bed was delicious.
-
There's an old woman I met last night, Hulda Horneland, a little straight
body, fine white hair, a fineness everywhere in her, strong, direct, her
own self. A bloom in her face. She lives in a trailer, has her own pickup,
keeps old horses. Her sister with her, a few years older. "I'm Jenny
Kennie" in a child's voice. Grey, whiskered face, frail, bent, she's
in twilight childhood, "I get so lost." A long time with a mean
husband, they say, "He scared her so much."
They showed me a family picture, the two of them beautiful, Hulda's gaze
keen and thoughtful, Jenny lit up smiling.
It's morning, pancake warming, the snow's melting for tea. A pink rim
in the south and a lot of lavender clouds moving west.
There are nice little bubbles sounding from the snow melting, and when
I went out after making fire and stood in the yard with the snow buckets,
there were two birds singing. The year's turned.
You know how the quality of a time and I suppose place are always different
and not usually tasted until after and then it's the strongest part of that
time, the feel of it. It's the undertime, and it's what nostalgia goes for.
I've been trying to know it while it's there.
And all the lives of reading.
It seems that those who try to make a work out of their time are entrenched
in singularity.
-
What's your keenness for straight lines in nature.
I find this today, you might know it:
For this light binds the sky together, like
the hawser that strengthens a trireme, and thus holds together the whole
revolving universe.
JoAnn's letter said "walking a tight line," I wrote "a
tight line" (yesterday) and today the Plato went under it. The straight
lines in nature are the ones you don't see.
23
Waking earlier and seeing morning, sun, read Melville naked in the big
chair at the east windows, drinking tea.
The drifting in brilliant sunshine, snow running. [running snow]
Ground set in ridges, blue and light. The blue shadow and in it flakes blown.
[snow dust] [drift edge]
Earlier a flock of white birds thrown up suddenly, turning, no longer
white.
The camera battery cold.
In yoga, quick gathering of the lightness, body though lumpy is quick
to sleek.
[letter]
Friday early morning
In the work with papers I keep doing the easy, sifting, pleasure of throwing
away everything that's not it, moving fast, omnipotent, and then I hit something
that IS it and it's unbearable, I know it's there and it's a world and I
don't know what to do with it, try to see it so I can throw it but I know
it has to stay it's full of life and scares me.
-
The way you said hello hello hello hello hello said itself to
me many times that day and the next.
-
Today was a white day, overcast, the clouds are the color of snow, faint
pinkness or blueness in east and west.
Storm windows here, don't frost, at night double reflection on black.
Red armchair in front of the fire, feet on a chopping block, table moved
so it faces through the window. In the kitchen the door's window has a starry
pattern that comes and goes. Can tell temperature by it. Always look in
the morning.
-
A lovely man, Halterman, fixed the typewriter. Kept saying it would be
very expensive, three hours work to dismount the carriage, $25 per. Meanwhile
desultory poking. I kept him talking, he put in a drop of oil, suddenly
it was working. He wouldn't take any fee. Even the carriage bell works now.
Credit Union will lend two and a half thousand for a Nagra. "I'm
sure that will be possible," as if it pleased him.
Loneliness rewarded by little loves and entrances into odd lives. Watching
how what isn't said says itself nonetheless.
In freezing water a rim freezes solid and needles come off it into the
unfrozen middle, and so coagulation closes in.
Movie work. Patience, such patience with its formlessness, maybe it's
really there but if so moves very quietly. I trust it, and go on with little
studies. Maker, make, I'll try not to bother you, do you need anything.
It has to come out of a whole order and that isn't ready.
It's one AM, yawning.
I found a London dream of my brother building a beautiful and skillful
addition to a house. Then my father tried to kill him.
Do you know the way of thinking that is, when you're reading about something
else, single thoughts often interesting jumping in from the side, as if
reading frees up the lateral?
Today I remembered a sense of balance from an earlier time - I think
it made long sentences. What I tried to recall in it was - this is difficult
- how it knew what layer of thought to ride in and still keep a sense of
the supporting layer. Process-thinking separates what can be together. The
process, and its balance, decisions, are implicit and visible, knowable
in any work. In the sense of a balance where the implicit is clearly held
as well as the explicit, I could feel something of my mother, as if that
mind is one I'd been in with her at her best. Can't verify. What haunts
with them is having known their best - ah, that anxiety about best.
It's peaceful. Got up, put some more snow in to melt. Fire, dark, room.
24
Time is seeming odd again. How can there be so much.
25
Pestered by arguments with the enemies. Concluded I need some victories
of skill. But I don't like that realm.
The high arch went east and passed sun coming west and then it was a
strong afternoon. Sitting in the sun at the post office. The children come
from skating walking back to school. The shapes of their procession, the
voices, and the road with buildings on one side and sun.
Omlid's house, the magic place with spruce trees. I came unaware of the
white owl on the highest point of the highest spruce white by intense blue,
looking down motionless at me slowly climbing through to the knees in deep
white.
With the camera feeling interest everywhere and how subtle the eyes could
become.
But the fine moment was in Omlid's field walking looking at the sparkles
and fine shadow lines on the snow surface. It all moved, walking, and suddenly
I saw the sparkles in the air - really? - yes turning and flashing, a very
few, had been hidden in the air.
Eyes hurt from photographing glare.
Made two very bad drawings that scared me.
[letter]
It was a white morning, then the edge of the white sky moved east, an
arc N-S and opened blue behind, intense blue. I went to Omlid's old house
to get a geometry text. The fine moment when I'd struggled through drifts
and across a field and was again in the drifts on the wind side of the windbreak
breaking through over the knee, absorbed in the feel of the place that opens
behind the house, magic, because it's spruce trees and that's a fairytale,
the way they're at the edge of the bush intimate with the unpainted pointed-roof
house.
My eyes went suddenly up - direct to the gaze of a big snow owl brilliant
white at the point of a spruce tree, with that staring blue behind.
Later when I was going home I drove parallel to the house and its bush,
it was a distance but I could see that white person on its highest point
rotating west. Seemed a sea voyager.
When I was walking across the fields back to the car I was looking at
sparkle flakes on the loose porous snow in the top layer. Some of the flakes
stacked so loosely throw fine blue lines all in parallel. Or is it that
the surface is minutely raked by wind? - Because those lines aren't parallel
to the shadow lines of stubble stems.
While I was looking at the angular sparkles and the fine blue lines I
suddenly saw that the air had bits in it too, whose motion I hadn't seen
because of the motion of walking. Or were they afterimages? Flat-sided sparkles
that would flash and disappear as they turned. No there they were, turning
and playing.
I've been interested in the interaction of straight lines and currents,
loose running and tight lines.
I found something just now, a shot, and with it something like an idea
of proportion. The right person was outside with the 35mm camera and saw
the obvious and it came from seeing something earlier. It builds to this
and every time I've run away from it and this time the battery on the Beaulieu
was too cold. I probably think I can get it next time but it never comes
back the same.
Just briefly something's letting me think these long dim odd researches
can focus.
Sun is simplest direct food.
Will you send one of those 6x8 hardback notebooks, lined, red spine and
black or green. I found the one I have in the paper shops at the foot of
the hill - near the place where you change to buses from trolleys, there's
an overpass or viaduct and the shop was somewhere on the North Point side
of it, to the left facing toward home.
Today you're close (Tues).
Note: on fear of witchcraft, several times when I've lain tired in an
afternoon - it has to be lying on my back usually with feet crossed, when
I've been partly able to watch things arrive in my mind I don't recognize
- I overhear something and call it back, "likes to the bull ox,"
some fragment, and try to read it, then find myself in a zone where I'm
afraid of death, the fire or wind. I seem to be a sheer tenuous existence
without the presence of the definite mind who's figured out how to survive
in this world and without the consciousness to drift in the other.
In Chevalier's book about ceremonial magic, he says that during the 6
months of his training, when he was learning to evoke spirits, he was forbidden
to sleep during the day.
What I found today is a perfect little vision. It's like seeing the beginning.
- Co-op
- Finest Orange Pekoe
- 60 TEA BAGS
That's to tell you rations are short. Enclose some of your fine tea will
you.
What do you know about li, principles of order, markings in material.
Maybe will put some niblets in with the eggs, and a board in the heater
for fast heat.
It has been intensely cold, often -30, and near that for two weeks. Waking
the air's ice, outside is a crystal clear brilliant deadliness, the smoke
rolling out brilliant white against deep blue. Water on the heater frozen
solid. Well's frozen, I melt snow in the kitchen. The apples knocked together
sound like billiard balls.
I go out in shirtsleeves to fetch snow, when fragile put on a hat.
I cook a pot of rice. When it freezes knock it out of the pot, take it
to the chopping block, chip some off, with the axe, to warm with tuna in
the frying pan.
Get up at noon, am awake 'til 2, 3, 4.
Am often a long time before falling asleep and an hour awake head under
covers in the morning.
Spent two weeks reading all the journals. The long work with lovers seems
to have been half the real work in all this life. When I look at it now
less feminist-enraged it seems to have been fine intent dedicated work,
people assimilating each other's gifts, testing their own. The other half
was doing the same thing with people as makers. Books, and all such.
And that period seems to be finishing, although I keep testing the sense
that it is. I wonder about whether the push outward stops at a certain time,
or temporarily, and then there's colonization of whatever's been reached.
Still suspended in polarities, everything, habitually, has been coming with
the name of its opposite. I've left them hanging there.
This, I mean still being, keeps surviving formulation.
-
But Paolo, without ever wasting a moment, was
always attracted by the most difficult things of art .... When engaged in
these matters Paolo would remain alone, like a hermit, without any intercourse,
for weeks and months, not allowing himself to be seen .... He left a wife
who used to say that Paolo would remain the night long in his study to work
out the lines of his perspective, and that when she called him to come to
rest, he replied, "Oh what a sweet thing this perspective is!"
Vasari on Uccello
[letter to my mom]
There are onions on the stove frying with chicken. It's hot in here.
That's to tell you all's well. From the south-looking table I see the ice
fog, darkening blue. Headlights on the road, when they came past the fenceposts,
made rotating spokes in the air. It was a powerful afternoon, the last of
a cloud ceiling passed, going east, and then it was wonders. At Omlids'
old house a white owl sat without moving on the top of the highest spruce.
I was taking pictures of snow, its sparkles and shadows. - The onions have
burned a little.
It is a lovely winter, especially lately, a strong happiness in working
and studying. I'm often up till 4. Am healthier than any winter since the
pregnant one, even the little arthritic twinges are gone, and spirit is
very glad to be alone.
Tell him 'rebel' comes from re-bellare, to fight back. You won't will
you, then I will myself.
I forgot to tell you that when he's in pain on my account I am equally
in pain on his, it is one of the mysteries of connection or identity. The
last time it was very bad, a torment, only I am learning it and he just
runs from it. Pain is information. If the message is accepted it
goes away. If not it comes back worse and you have to kill yourself (in
parts) to get away from it. We aren't taught to read pain right. Any farmer
should know that when some part knocks it means it has to be adjusted. Who'd
be too proud to service a U-joint.
27
Already body's pretty.
Quarrelsomeness offering itself to be seen through.
The two men in their truck. I don't like that the one gets out to let
me in, and I'm too close to knees and elbows of two with beers in their
hands. The one is offering me beer so I have to say no more than once. When
I say something it's unheard.
When I'm leaving he chucks my chin. I say would you like it if I did
that to you? He says sure. I do it and say "Was that nice?" "Yes
it was" he says. I say "No it isn't nice," not angry. Then
later he's telling me about his rock collection, moved, telling a story
many times told about the lump of seashells in his field.
The perfect clearness of vision. Horizon and farm roofs.
At night accidentally lash my right eye. Its tears.
28
At Dolemo's the quiet, today Bernice went on with her tasks, Helmer shut
his eyes. Television. Bernice showed her long dresses. Hulda at the door
with a transparent red scarf around her head. California Salt Lake City
Hong Kong Washington each with some uninteresting interest: angel on a steeple,
a woman in black, bikers or Indians.
One of their graces is the way they'll turn an observation, it's a form
but the variants please us all, "Where'd you lose your eye" and
then I'm set up to reply gracefully and come in laughing.
Helmer says come oftener. How to see them any differently than I do,
among their interactions. These times it seems a gradual harmonious visiting
of some lives I can do nothing with, their local lives behind Valhalla Centre.
Space book says everything's fine, go back to the void, dissolve it all,
you'll be strong beautiful and skilful. Think of Roy and T and how the powers
they get in spontaneity seem still to belong to something wrong in their
will. When I was in it, rage and revenge made me doubt. Intimidation and
its opposite: confluence, false smiling. Something else: not to enslave
or impress, a right one would irradiate without drawing it back in homage.
Admiration. But to be set independent again by it, and that means before
going into the lovely open the angers have to be found.
What's the way to dissolve what holds so my freedom doesn't harm.
Fighting, learning to fight. Did they harm me, that's what I need
to know.
Today: this is to show the kind of superstitious struggles.
29
What I feel to be battling is unconscious (demonic) power that the sense
of quality/ambition looks everywhere for, fear of it making ugliness in
the rest of them. Power vs safety, own will vs obedience to the larger unknown.
Joyce says both, but I'm not sure, what would it be. I'm no farther in this
than before. Sorcery's the scareword.
Woman with a hole in her head: in my writing
of that time, sexy or hypnotic exaggeration, poetry manner, inaccuracies,
glamours, but what grabbed me today was seeing father's and then his sister's
ducking out, and having to wonder if I have to understand it differently,
a structure like an epilepsy?
30
Saving wood. In the icy wind tight jeans disable the bum flesh.
Seem to have been packing to leave. Cold coming stronger and the fire
not keeping it back. Tomorrow have to get to Beaverlodge.
31
Last wood, sun on the red chair, white curtains, the beautiful room I
have to leave for unknown strangeness. A last humble try at the post office
and driving carefully to Beaverlodge as if in danger. Army trucks passing
in twos. The windshield frosted, no heat coming through the heater, window
open, thirty below. Mountains standing a high blue serration, pleasure of
distance.
Kept looking at myself in mirrors seeing a butch undistinguished person
in short hair.
Bernice kept saying "Gee I'll sure miss yuh Allie," anxious
to please and actually my necessary help but her talk was a battering I
couldn't turn. "You've pepped me up lots of times when I was down."
up north volume 2
- up north volume 1: 1978-1979 june-january
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
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