| up north 2 part 2 - 1979 april-may | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
Sleeping through night on the bus. In Beaverlodge fresh air and the old man's thoughtful accent, the car. In Hythe the woman's different tone. Do I look like them now. At Helmer's Bernice shows photos. "See how thin I used to be." The man at the side of an oat field, california poppies in front of him. Mrs Swanson among her cushions, pink dress and brooch, under the coffee table her bare feet.
House in order. Want to sleep. - Slept and it got bright. Sun went down north of west. The animals that ran away from the house and sat looking. A pair in the fields. Athapaskan things. 7 [Go to see my parents, who are back from their winter traveling in the US] Drove out at the end of the day. Distance of yellow to the north. Rutted greasy black road. Ed's just coming out the door, I say hello as if it isn't a person. She at the table writing, holding her arm across herself, nervous. It's a question gives her Maria. We are all animated by the woman's stories. "When he went to the concentration camp he said wait three years even if you don't hear from me." At the dance, he struck tinder, he was so handsome. She said I'll wait forever. Walking through the village they had passed the house of the local strange person, hair to his shoulders, unkept house. She said who's that, he kept walking. "But who is it?"confronting him. "It's Uncle Abram." We laughed again. She was swept into Germany and all the rest were swept back, but she, with a small girl and pregnant, stayed and went to Canada. Waited for him. Refused offers, worked, learned to manage, a long time later learned he was married with four children. Mary: "She's still carrying a torch for him so high." Ek sei so's et es. Album full of strangers they found and loved. He stayed away but liked to say differential, "I'll show you." Visiting from across the road, Mary Seiburt and her awful offering of the show biz TV Christian. I told her, shocked, "I must say I hate Terry Winter."
Go to ask Tone Tofteland whether I can rent it. Her fine ways, loving her plants. "I think I know what it is." "It would be good for the house." "Yes," moving the kettle, "it would be good for the house." His horses, her births. Olivia said you don't have to worry about anything when you have them so close together. Instant coffee. Looking at her lined face, lines across lines. Her quiet voice in the house without lights. He had no memory. I was careful because she could tell. She got out the weaving at the last moment, to show me.. "It's very fine." "Yes it is fine." "And it's well made." "Yes it's well made." 9 Waking: the light. He came in his truck, I heard and jumped up. Talked as if not there, but under the hood helped well. Nordhagen's watching. They love Charlie. Sent a fish. John Tofteland said yes I don't mind. Wanting to make signs and leadings for the swan house. The open windows and animal trails through them. Swallow's nest in the front room upstairs. [letter to Jam] The house at swan's lake, no rent, from the beginning of May when the road dries. I'll go silent for a while, say what you intend or if you need something. It came just right. I struggled through snow to it yesterday. The doors were open but it was dry. At sundown I went shyly to visit the people who own it. She knew what I wanted before I said. She loves the house, wants it inhabited. The tea came though I don't have it yet. Your reputation with Vancouver friends (Diana and she says others) is that you're spoiled, arrogant, and leave other people picking up after you. Sandy used to tell you you were socially brutal, inconsiderate. Wealth and privilege. Did what you like. Your protest makes me feel like I must give you a good fight. 10 Luke said "I love you very much." I was in a building, took the elevator wanting to go to another building, maybe to Luke, but the bottom button lit up. Someone else in the elevator had pushed CANCER. Was passing through a corridor with rows of skulls. Some of them had one eye socket larger than the other. Then there were parts of skeletons mounted with descriptions. How to work. sea meadow. Trace it. Feeling J ahead as a test and looking forward to depth. Brilliance again. Boiling play. Weary. Life in the plant book. Going to sleep first the diaphragm then mid-chest in pain, clenched. Roy. [EJH Corner 1964 The life of plants Littlehampton] 11 With Indian people at night. Went out to two young girls. We were in a huddle. They started to sing. I knew I could be the third part. The high rising of singing. Mary Davis was there smiling. On the road to visit the east place met a herd. At the fenceline, went under. The herd came there too. I looked up to see a horned animal running at me. Stopped just short. Turned back. A woman and men tell me he's a bad one. But I stopped him probably by not realizing he was dangerous. Waking thought maybe the bull is fright. 12 Thursday Seaweeds of one house and of two houses. Hythe, insurance, plates, windshield wiper, gas cap. The car's blithe. 4 letters. A shock. I'm hopeless, then fight in detail, then seem to have got it essential. And wind cold coming up and can't see ahead and. Balance. [letter] What was your first feeling about the swan house. Do you have money, can you work on the thesis there? No electricity, long days and very bright lamp light but it hisses. Far off the road, quiet. But primitive like you know. Maybe Luke and some of the time maybe his cousin. Might be fine or might rain. Fresh lettuce, cheap steak, but awkward kitchen. I will have painted and put in windows and screens. My car will continue to irritate you. In Vancouver, night before I left, I had Trudy-Cheryl-Rhoda to see slides. Evening of unbearable heaviness, I just wanted them gone. T was revenging, R pleasant and C in her cowardly way stood by comforting with nearly imperceptible gestures. Watch for the inner paralysis, a sort of blank. Maybe you know what to do with it. Keep a straight record of factual what-happened-then and you'll be alright. If you're thinking to try Trudy, her warp is unfinished revenge on her mother and I think some racial paranoia. Manipulation is the key word. You may find things in her to mirror you but she's no virgin, she's been through something in woman. And she's not asexual, she refuses, to control her lovers, but she knows how. I've been cautious telling you anything about her, not wanting to pander. Last night a row of 4 couples jiving, C and someone at the second place, R and T in the fore. A beautiful dance, they moved symmetrically, left to right, heads dropped back, chests arched. Were in skirts and sweaters. In my dreams I've waltzed with T and flown with C, and that's accurate. In both, I was leading. The flying was better than the waltzing but T was more there than C. I've told no one about the swan house. Be discrete, don't make a story of it. Please. 13 Trying to sort her. To the T and C writing and, what - not a natural sight, breaking into ideas but pressing and testing. The mythology is now ugly. But without it a forlorn world, only the moment, waiting to see whether the crummy person will be right sometimes, oh please not just the uglies. Or lonely suspended forever and not allowed Luke or the child or joy of making either, only the crooked love of that one and the others. Sobbed and cried. 14 Restless. Gradually became a day to clean house, unblind the windows, wash the floor, my hair, a shirt. Still restless, don't want to read. What. Mary and him, scared at evening. She's at the kitchen table listening to the Messiah. Glad looking at the local history book. Has things to give. He comes in and it sends her obedient to have her bath. Greet him in the old way by not speaking. Tea and I set his but he chooses the other table. The slides, colors and plants. Desert. Plants and views. The little plant, "this dear little thing." Last week substitute teaching the bad class. Could imagine her too hungry to know what's going on, and like that since she was a little girl. Packing food for me she was humming. Her support and their ears making me happy and quite young. The blue blanket from Greg's bed reappearing! Going home, at the door we see the yolk-red moon. 15
Back in the familiarity of stupidity, writing. Bernice stops in. "Ten minutes with you." She's less civilized without Helmer. "Who's going to look after you when you're an old one?" "You I hope Allie." "What did you say? I didn't hear that," laughing. 16 At the swan house chipping broken glass out of windows. In bed in the dark listening to the radio, Haven of Rest. "Shipmates ...," a kind voice. Listening I found the Frauenstube at church and could walk into the cloakroom, evening service. American voices at night, they sound different now. Writing and tape efforts from shaman notes, made me watchful, could notice the different ways of working. Hills all very high today. Driving through slush on the hill a truck
crawling and stalled but I swiftly pulled left and around. 17 Snow, town. Helmer to see, the hospital and strangeness there. "I never expected to see you here." He was eager to tell. Empty roads, faith to get home. Coming to Mary's I just see his truck leaving. Discomfort and calling it closer. "He wants all your heart." At the table talking about god so we can bring the disliking words. Talking to our selves she with her forehead clenched, what's that. Our handwritings, she saw her writing in mine. "I've wondered why I don't feel anything for my father," she said. The real life came into her face and voice when she said "You know I've often been interested in ...." - I wait feeling it will be about me but could be about anything - "... how it would be if you would take god into your life." I say "Why couldn't you be interested in how it is now, what makes you think I don't have, you see you've prejudged it." Her respect and love as if held off for that possibility and I say I'm revolted by the name Jesus Christ although the actual presence might be good. "It's another tribal book that instructs its own people. You can't
think that, you couldn't put it together but I have to try to put it all
together." 18 The leading of the spirit, I was glad to be led outside in boots walking in the sweet late light, heard music at the corner, and a corner stone. The microphone beautiful on the tripod. Battling without freedom at list writing. A little loosening. Working on the dreams, flayed beaded bulls, not bulls, steers. Car slipping on the track. Dreaming strength, creation, possible lovely work. Career. When I saw the spirit had led me to Charlie having moved his trailer back there it was smile and say oh no no. Fright looks for signs, strength does as it likes. Can. Dim penetrations. The sky, glancing not following. 19 The car engine had stars on it, wouldn't turn over. Left it. Working on papers. Shaking the pumpkin poems, thinking of dope meaning. I want to go out of this slow thick self into what scared me. I'm fat, face rosy in the green hat. Look like these people. Then through snow to the car in the afternoon, try again. Starts easily. Sticky road. One postcard. Flying to La Glace. Co-op store. I'm at the coffee looking for cheapest, look up - Janeen is there, Janeen, thin and lovely. Hello, smile. I take my hat off and run my hand through my hair, notice a slightly servile crouch, the queen's here though no one sees her but me. I show her my car Stop at Epp's. Mary is sick, red nose. "I have to see you today." I'm so dim, what's happening. "Ottawa phoned," importantly. "She said it's the loveliest film, it should go." [the Canada Council arranging to have me at the International Experimental Film Congress in London in June] Is the dimness from work in the dark - the good red road. Alice, Arden, Charlie, Charlie's daughter, Jules visiting. Jules' almost inchoate rapid talk telling his body's losses and damages. His brother was asleep next to him. He dreamed an angel came in the window. He went down early and told his father Garth is dead. "I believed the dream." 20 Huddling under blankets every morning talking to myself. Out through the cold - new custom - with bare legs to squat on the edge of the porch boards and see the day. To Beaverlodge sleekly to buy glass. In Hythe a bath in the Hythe Hotel. Reading over veal cutlets. A delicious smell arriving and leaving over the mud at the laundromat and a fine boy looking the way I look when I like someone. Brown car splashed. In Valhalla a ditch full of water next to a fence, looks like a pretty canal. Home, in the door rapidly without thinking, fire to make. Go to bed with the hot water bottle. Sink, know I'm sinking. What thought, scared, what was it saying, where speech gets different. A tough wind. I leave it and the fire. When I wake the wind's gone, fire's slight. Restless, what, walk around, bring in the pile of papers and work. Imagining lyrics, work, doing beautiful invention from the vision I like most. But death, from the side, putting its price on every moment. Justifying art. Not knowing in the writing, finding the gathered phrases and thinking how to put written/spoken/pictures into lyrics. Feeling the old way of working, my dim touch. It's trusting, and the discursions are its anxiety. 21 Many owls white and brown hunting. Sun and once more make love to myself. When I get up it's at my feet on the bed. Saturday room. Soaked fruit. Lonely restless work. at the valve as well as I could. through grass and through grass not finished. Trying to remember writing it to know what it meant. Gradually understood it partially. Got rid of some stones notes. Wondering whether I'm out of the flood or whether I've absorbed it. The two underground pieces, their patchy obsessive fine and stupid yammer. I hear their wordplay and don't like it. None of the joy of delicate language. It's nearly foreign but I felt curiously Val's emotion reading it, what it was to her. Out in cold wind, snow melt, sun, I see almost nothing. To the post office and into the store, hello surprised as if I hadn't prepared as I used to, for that abrasion and wrong. I'm submerged, slack. Not wanting to move to collect wood into the trunk and then finding more. Back to work, heavy brain, lonely, unable. Get in the car and drive north on the Spring Lake road. At the corner thinking will I try it or back up, a greasy stretch. She slides, digs through. The sensation of coming out of a hole, effort and then motor and body loosen when it's done. So silent I heard the scrape of my chin on my collar. 5-point turn and home. 22 Sun still strong and the room not cold. Look into Roethke. There's life in him. Can't read much, want to work, excited, my territory. Get the pile. The man whose heavy step easy to order. Type out bearded woman. When it's the woman with a hole in her head it's harder because made by the voluptuous one and exaggerated, but has to stay as it is. I took it all apart, felt and remembered the time, can't put it together, what did she know I don't. Then nnae in a singleship, the sweet original. And two directions, inland and ocean, the joy of the place but struggling unable to grasp how to organize the picture, because it didn't know. Betweentimes walked in sun to see and hear water in the ditch. Sense of technical struggle coming. Didn't like how thinking of the movie made my seeing greed. Writing am not at the furthest concentration. Momentarily saw a red pickup toward the bridge in a powdery pink light. Mauve clouds, a string of white high swans dotted and clumping stretching flickering. Many birds. The first frog sound. A whistle in the porch. Yellow sundown, clear pale intense yellow northwest. Radio all day. Cheryl often here in that writing. 23
Went and parked at the swan's house where it has partly thawed, read sheet after sheet of your letter in sun and wind sorrowing and enjoying along with you. I know you need to finish the thesis in some form, I've always known that I think. Only wonder how long will it take you to know what its form doesn't have to be. Actually I like your thesis and wish you'd send me some, I don't think it's my rival, the only part of it I doubt is the way you wildly, even insanely, misjudge how long it takes to do any part of it. You could write - oh it's funny your shameful secret's just like mine about wanting to be a great writer and not being great enough to even admit it - out your difference, write something where you're on the line. I was on the line in Trapline but where's the line gone. Out of movies, just when I'm equipped? Not a joke. "I have to tell my parents. I can see it, fifty years from now." Is it the telling or the doing. Is it any telling that'd say "I'm not what you hope, I'm better" and know it's true. I've thought you were in Oedipus distress. Why are you betraying our beautiful intimacy for that boss who understands nothing. "It's for the money, little one, I can't be a queen without him." But the little one knows there's a law being obeyed and it's the one that says a hungry body can't love itself or its own flesh, otherwise there's no ... what? Reading how plants become toxic to their own pollen and only self fertilize at the last chance. 24 Restless, get in the car, go to Mary - oo! Field steaming. Camera. Do I know how? It's a little self conscious and worried, I mean the essential unconscious part like accepting a position for the camera. The white rock and the top of the frame. It seemed important to take it, to have begun, balancing moral worries and the push to do. In the evening drive for water, the ditches full and reflecting a ravishing smooth sky. Passing it the catch at the diaphragm, an unreleased thrill, feeling my distance from the fullness. The other world is when entered this one in its bliss. The evaporating field was: coagulation. Theme recognised. Beauty of white whirling out of black, cosmological, air, wind, but in truth I didn't see it and wasn't penetrated or only shallowly. And then driving feeling the power of it, and M telling the girl Naomi who spoke with her hands, and how she felt about Spiritual midwifery. Her watching and seeing and liking. 25 Rejoicing toward coffee, make a good pancake. Toothache still hurts sometimes in the depth of the jaw, nice pure pain, slight. Alice Bailey. An inner structure of thought, what is that. Her categories, I don't understand the difference between mind, soul and brain and don't want to be part of the empire of the Lord. But was happy thinking. I liked when she said the 'lower' kingdoms would learn consciousness through humans. 26 It's pouring. The creek's wide, a broad flood and knowing that under the broad flood there's a deep narrow own streambed. After opening the upstairs and seeing the flood from there, found beautiful line drawings, red willow, yellow grass in not-sky, not-ground. That was the loveliest. To the mail, saw the swans. It was seeing the swans cleared the day. Cleaned the car, set the bed on porch, knowing I'd go out with the microphone. Then equipment all nicely stowed to the field. Set the mic's lovely ear toward them, tested, found the zzzit came from headset at first slightly then remarkably. It picked them up as well as natural ears. [Hadn't realized yet that the parabolic mic was picking up the radar signal from the American DEW Line base at Saskatoon Mountain.] And hammering and sawing better. At that site rereading J. Had three
irritated notes not to mail. That lovely woman at the post office. Mrs Flaten
- could see her and still shine into her and made her pretty. She came to
see the cupboard. She and Mrs Wells attached to the house, both, today. 27 This day pleasure. In the morning wrote the pleasure of waking outside, bliss sun early live. At the post office the pretty woman and three fat letters. To the lake house in wind and sun to read them, as I drive home their sheets crawling, flying in the passenger seat. Clamped to replying until eyes and head are gone. Red airplane, a rotten piece of wood pulled up out of the grass. I say I pine for a woman's beauty. Swans' bodies above a lure circling. The shine off the creek. Water and sun. [letter] I miss hearing about him and her and Sheila and Hong Kong excursions and miss telling you little joys and interests. Suddenly feeling the deadness of night in a room and sleeping on the porch again. Delight of being in the currents of strong wind, hearing some ducks, seeing a star move south from the edge of the porch pillar intermittent with head under the cover, and woke this morning in sun from a dream like a magazine story feeling my body as bliss. Then washed my hair in creek water while the pancake stayed warm under some bananas and thought from the smell, oh Earth Conditioner. It is such potent spring. The creek extends nearly up to the post with the horns. Broad flood with its buried-in-water former channel. Water falls off the fields. Black furrows with blue sky standing in the curves. Two swans foraging old barley with some ducks. Owls cruising the ditches. Long threads of swan dots or more like arrows blinking crosslight southwest. Sadie Flaten came to visit yesterday. She came because she'd had a disagreement with her niece about whether the kitchen cupboard in the Olson place was only a small one, or, as she said, goes from the corner right up to the window. I sat her where she didn't have to look at me socially and she was telling me the rest of it before I could begin to remark on the weather. Her husband's death twenty years ago. "He didn't come in for supper and I said, 'Gus, Daddy hasn't come in for supper' and we all went out in the field to look for him. His outfit was standing there but we didn't see him and then Gus saw him laying dead." She'd come to look at some woman living alone by choice. I found I had something for her, as if her anxiety wasn't deep and I could send a jet of something right into her and make her smile like a kid. Then she put on her little overshoes and went home. Can I see through to anything. The last ten all came at once. Mr Fimrite in the post office said "Some boyfriend you've got there." I said "It's not a boyfriend, it's a girlfriend, we have a lot of business." - What strikes me in Foucault for instance is the way he's out of date because he doesn't understand intersubjectivity, the way being and knowing are passed around. Any hippy knows more about vibes and spaces. What I found wrong in the Kits Witches was that model of each one as one. I don't mean something stupid, I mean the unwilled 'unwilled' transmission or sharing of information. An unknowing or partly unknowing participation. I don't think I am any more the shaman of the old kind, though I can take pictures that look like it. I'm cautious and have refused many times. I still have shamanic materials, it's true. They signal an impotence. I'm trying again to see whether the beauty of scratched stones, and the ease I have in making those things, is in some way wrong or whether it's my right work. I'm not at an end of it. Here's this house, everything around it is beautiful and nourishes me. The other people from this place are mostly nourished by imported things, so have I made a useful vision or not? I know it's birthright, there from young. The world of mind-bend is there like an accusation. And always, you made it clear too, in terms of an opposition of male mind and female wholeness. That opposition is a con. Your Pound knew. I'm trying not to get trapped into either refusing Paris because it's your animus or giving myself to learning its skills to show you I am an X after all. Is there anything there I need. Your ten letters in many ways seemed to scorn me. The contemplative buddy and the man's mind. You knew that would kill. I knew it was there. You finally said it. Don't send it into shamans, it's the competition between you and me simply. Yes. I wanted a competition in a different way. These letters invite me to compete to kill. No. Have you come to see it as necessary. Do you think we'll never know anything unless we are willing to make it enemies. You're wrong, it isn't that I love the traitors, it's that if I love an exceptional quality I leave myself open to be betrayed. No one whose spirit isn't fine has ever got that chance. You've invited it to the execution as if you had a final disappointment. How is it you don't know better. Put together more of the parts. It is tenure isn't it, you want your important job. It would be hard for you here, will test out your dream. I mean the other one. Your two dreams pulling in different ways. Do you know that well enough so you won't say it's my fault.
Washing brown car on dead grass looking at its small injuries. Mud holding feet. The house. Go to it as if sentimentally, work at the putty. Bed early and for a moment feeling the lucence of sky not a surface but deep. 29 [I drive to Dawson Creek to see Paul Kinsella who is working as a porter on a museum train.] This was the Sunday morning, slight warm sun, waking to the car and anticipating a journey, and now write when it's dark again. The highway and up and down, alone, past a woman at a shed on a bank above the road on left (is this 'me'?) and then see her yard full of medicine poles each with a birdhouse. Coming down into town seeing the steam on the train. Early light still. I like going to the private part of the train, Peace River car - "Porter?"? "I'm here." "Which?" "In here" (the washroom). He comes out, "Do you want something?" ready to smile but I missed the moment that would have said something and then babble as I've learned. Keep trying to hold a line and steer to an essence but how he fritters, helpless and willing. I was suspended seeing and feeling and then trying to imagine it, his experience and imagining me in it. Different long thin rooms, the country and the little green sea. Polaroid. Eager to try. First two fine cold ones, by then the sky covered. Sitting on the street talking about what love is, intent in old forms. Valerie from England, her child with a brain tumor at five died at nine. We were women when I talked about Luke. Paul's misery without a good formulation. The transparent ear in the dark, a single drummer with one song, the
first frog of the season singing alone. I record it. 30 Threw out the pancake, what to eat, fluffed eggs, 4, coffee. Ugh, this ugly face and hair in eyes, cut a clearing around my face and ears again Beating through Synchronicity finding almost nothing except "The soul behaves like a point," confirmed. I am a star traveling together with you. Time for the house. It's drier, come into the clearing, the warm enclosure of the trees. Some crude impatient sweeping. Liked to sink into magazine stories. Come back - where? Don't remember that moment from before. Is this me? Wanting to do everything in the house well to build a concentration into it, carrying broken glass, dusty papers to a place under the caraganas, crossing hidden water furrows. The long grass, what to do with it. Suspension in it, who'll be here with me. Geese grazing the barley stubble. Understanding immediate history seemed a thing I did younger, and done however well, as whatever foundation, ie magazine stories, and this time's, letters to Mary. Without energy, supper. She was glad to see me, be away. Lemon pie. Then in the old Wiens house a bench and a table, maybe the cupboards. Light a horizontal flood, red willows. I marveled at how the camera finds a certain vision, things never before seen now penetrating that home. And the instinct to find crocuses, wanting to take them to her. Alive alive fields and willows, trees. May 1 Dear Socrates, because your little town, dust, olive trees and people eagerly wondering. The poor stonemason believed he had a divine mission to question all statements and that a voice guided him. The inspired hanging from their muse like chains from a magnet. I like to get into the car early, cold, bacon and bread, the storeman's open gaze as if he likes me. To Helmer with the tape recorder to try it, the dangerous perching above his attraction. My voice on tape, the seduction is evasion, with Hulda it came out without the slant curve. Retraction, distaste, draws back into hearing itself. Back from him, how else could it be. Breakfast on the bench, cold wind, sun, radio talk show about American television. "Well, anyway, that was my opinion." Sorting tapes, ear to the speaker, listening to M and me intimate in different times, an eccentric, thinking, never foolish darker voice and the rapid also eccentric younger voice pushing in asking, insisting. Raving from coffee, wanted to write, then flip, no, but then revised snakes easily and in sorting images threw away many, their use obviously absorbed. Bernice intent, her complaint pouring out at the door, her small red face. 2 Bacon! And coffee to rush up for. Drive away to mail and then - what - write you - Roethke. I'm 'talking' and draw the house Up to see it, at first not knowing, then work fast moving boxes of rubble, loving the rooms best, going out under the trees and bushes seeing things bare that never will be bare again in the year. The laid-down grass, walking through bare slight corridors between the spruce. The thrill of child-size - under each of the spruce - animal holes, with cones laid down. Found raspberries. Trees and among them stones. Looking for treasure for the house. In a granary the jump of pleasure to see a blue coffee pot, a dove-tailed box, True Confession magazine, an army manual on how to use a bayonet. This delight, still doing it this way, still, again, what am I giving up for this. And what will we find in that house, mine, not at all yours, except for finding. Days feeling future. Came home (got stuck in the field, used willow sticks in the ruts). Omlid's old house for a bench, a bookshelf. [letter] [floor plan of the second storey of the lake house] Have been working here afternoons in heat held by the four sides of trees. Precinct. Been given a woodstove. We began like settlers by cutting trees. It's a bird sanctuary. Chipmunks whistle very loud from hidden places, thinking to scare me. Glass installed across their corridors. Swept and old putty chipped away. Bench and table my grandfather made for the front porch. The dark blue dress in my fantasy came from finding a little roll of fine fabric that color in the upstairs middle room - a dress taken apart, kept for the pattern. Shin bones vibrate, where'd you get that. I've never heard it told. When I read "News of the Universe" [Jam's piece in Paideuma] I have a feeling I've been working on what's in it. Before and since. Years. [sketch of floorplan for ground floor] Why are there no more notebooks, red spine. Urgent to find some. Mine are full and they are the only right ones.
Roethke for Yeats You haven't replied to so much. 3 Luke was dying. I was with M and E wailing, sorrowing. He was under the bed and might hear. Woke, oh he's not - 4 Friday "Even then I would look at you and think, there's more there than I put in." I was waiting for a revelation of my special genius as a child, never admitted before. What she said was less, but lengthened my neck. Also she admitted he was an enemy and I admitted a very handsome enemy. Because I asked if I now seemed smarter or stupider, and she said "But I'd never dream of ..! More in control of your circumstances." In her green sweater and shiny hair. I said Rumplestiltskin: "You'll go on a long time." Waking under snow and loving felt the density of the womb with its only slightly halted timing. [letter] Can I call you my dear: this moment's dear. I want to tell you ordinary daily things, Mary in a green sweater standing at the door letting herself show glad to see me. She's happier than for years because she has the right job. He doesn't speak to me, doesn't dare, it makes boring meals (and so bad food), but things are said in his presence, and mine, that know their target. Impersonal things. "Snow is the poor man's nitrogen." May. This morning I woke under snow a quarter inch thick, three sleeping bags and some blankets between it and me. Exciting. Potatoes and onions cooking in the kitchen, with curry. Rice from yesterday and always remembers you. Nearly 10 at night and still blue daylight. A rotten log in the fire. I noticed after a while ants pouring out of its end suddenly awake and dizzy. It's been too wet and cold for an April retreat and now I have to go back to work. Local I hope. Maybe planting. - Once again you took all day. Now a candle shaking on the typewriter. What's to know. I'm worthy of you. My 'man's mind' is intermittent as in anyone. Come if you want. Between then and now will you understand the impossible bind you put me in. I'm willing to work but if I understand you're putting me through what you won't go through yourself I don't know if I'll want to break you or if I'll just go quietly away. A nice letter from Roy saying Luke's out of school 20th July - 5th Sept and can come. The suspense is hard. No it isn't hard it is a small recurring ache at the back of the throat and an occupation by the voice that argues uselessly. Are you working or are you indulging an abusiveness. I'm getting sick of you. No I'm not sick I'm very well but I wonder if you'll want to go on in this blaming, which isn't a fine war. There's something wrong in the balance. I feel I should stop you by a roar of indignity. But the roar isn't there. Baffled, sore. And then recovery wishing you well. I asked my mother what it means when someone complains energetically
for two months. She said "It sounds like she's feeling the pull of
her two cultures." Saturday's dark, snow wet on the melting edge of the roof dripping. Lying a long time in bed until many pickups went by both ways. Touching myself a slower more confident timing, it's not specific and doesn't change the breath. Then I jump up in the longjohns, feel myself, pleased with body under old cotton, and then gather up shingles into the cardboard box, and cook scrambled eggs and make toast. Pressure of having twenty dollars left until when? Eat. Restless. Reading bits of Lucier, Satie, sound inventions from the wood box. Don't look much although furrows with new snow are lovely. Resisting the countrysides. Buy coffee tea, defiant, spend seven dollars and come home to a warm room. Papers. Uninterested habit work on the green notebook. Think of the tape recorder, read phrases and listen to their quality. What voice says of phrase. What has life as voice. Some small sequences. In the notebook much is too metaphysical to use. Shame as a shameful indulgence. Think, good, it has to be implicit, most of it has to be implicit and yet how can it be made about words/imagination/pictures. Imagining the precinct of the house. A post and mirror piece in long grass. Where. Then in the evening, bored, is this quiet life ended, finishing off?
Thought to read Kawabata, and then read it aloud, listening to the voice
I don't hear when I'm reading. It still pinches in some words. Erotic,
father. [Read from Snow country into the tape recorder.] 6 Last night when I was getting into bed the top blankets were wet from melted snow. Was a long time cold, clenched, awake, thinking, and then slowly body uncurling down. In the morning it's warmer, almost sun. Crows. Sunday. - And what. Noon. Radio. Sweep, heat water, wash dishes listening to Broadbent and callers. To the creek in boots, step on the low place, dip the white pail. It takes up orange water. The beavers have been housecleaning, piles of mud and sticks like wet nests. I go to the lake house, warm on south side, with putty, paint and one pane. Upstairs there is snow on the floor. Chipping at the peeled ceiling. Unputtied upstairs at the east window, gouged my hand and fell, said aloud that something was strange. Road in the field almost not sticking, kept driving. At home exercise on Foucault, tea and toast, and to be with her. On the radio interesting science stuff about tooth transplants, cancer tests, the bee orchid. To Dolemos recklessly, remembering the consciousness of strangeness. Wells and jail, and war, Helmer listening, Ellie in a red shirt imagining the war. Al MacKenzie's story, the man's haircut as if still in the army, twitching.
7 Hythe, laundry. [Go to the Beaverlodges experimental station to look for a job.] Leaning on a tree as waiting room, through window I see he's with clients. He beckons. On the hill, plantation trees. Driving in, knowing it's maybe a new time. The library, a man with large eyes and boy's hair, he has something. Then when he talks he's too eager to tell awards and projects, Hungarian, I think. He's eager to please the grown-ups. I tell him about Borges. He isn't willing to quite hear what I say from a female, irritating, you can do better than this. Magazines, hunger and coffee made anxiety, worried about all the information in the world. A nice building but not people. Einstein sweet old woman with soupy moustache picture, took the Nature home for it. Money oh worried about money. Pressure pain. Then seeing the built clouds with their lilac, blues, high round brightness, and dark below. A storm. To the house, to the house, is this a real moment. Ducks. It's multiple and lovely anyway, dark over orange to the north. Coming loving to the house, opening doors, looking through windows and verandah rails. Ducks' loud flight. Upstairs the north window. Willow branches. Came home writing it, realized it was joy, mouth open. 8 Today old rage. You dawdling in your self pities and other pities and I hanging around this house getting indebted for necessities, suspended and useless, reading novels, broke. No bold moves and miracles. And waiting with honesty, and lost by weakness and goodness and strength. And you fine partly and partly by novel fantasy but never the legendary
rightness again, and I'm caught to want it and so are you and under this
there's the firm necessity to be with you, in spite of my lost miracle,
in spite of lost heroes and friends and not knowing what to do. 10 At the interview cross and unwilling. A test, name three weeds. Awkward. First interview I've ever blown. Angry this fat person can stupidly question me. I looked out the window, watched surprised how I wouldn't perform. Hulda at lunch hand over her mouth to keep her voice from carrying. I asked whether she'd married straight from home and she told me her husband had sexual intercourse with her oldest daughter. "He told us to go." Listening to Bernice using her mother's manner. Got glass and put it in. Upstairs, down, working the putty, putting it
in nicely. 11 Filmed the moon.
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