up north 2 part 3 - 1979 may-july

work & days: a lifetime journal project

[alternative unedited version] 13 May, the Lake House Making a fireplace south of the house, breaking ground, fitting stones for a little courtyard.   As I worked the sorrel butterfly's private movement. Two of them rising together streaking through the tops of the spruce. Mud and stories.   A bath in the yellow plastic tub at the pump. Cold and hot, seeing along the stretch down to the lake. Scent beside trees.   M's letter flattering Paul shocked me. Their the dreadful hope to catch the children in family and religion. Books inventing demons and Satan to be able to believe themselves chosen for the right side.   Collecting ditch stones.   Helmer animated by traps and perfumes. The men separating into loud talk of the same tone, using what they know to brag. But when Helmer addressed me he took it back, hands knocking the chair.   [letter to Jam]   What I wanted - the memory of what it was - has come back to me. It's odd that you forgot it immediately and later I did too. It was too difficult.   I said I wanted to know. You said that wasn't what you wanted but even that moment you did want it.   We were best when we were willing to know anything. We were frightened and close to our limits and I want to be that again.   Remembering this made my body open in a way it hasn't for a long time.   We remember a lot of failures and think of them as betrayals, and then the plots of self defense confuse us more.   You do want to know but there is something you want more.   It turned out there was also something I wanted more, I wanted to be touched and to have someone to talk to.   I'm sorry I was buyable. I'm understanding why you're contemptuous of girls. 14 [My mom fetches me to help plant her garden]   Bringing her through the house knowing she'd like it.   M saying have breakfast first. Emptying ashes.   On the slope together digging and planting. Wind, overcast, speaking without thought like child and mother.   "Shall I go pick up your husband?" The charge when he gets into the truck. A reversal, it's never been like this before. Knowing he won't like it. Then at supper Stitch-Randall suddenly and I don't want the awful food. Go out to change my tire. He comes out after me and in fact does all the wheel taking off, hacks at the jack stand, feverish.   At home cleaning the front rooms.   15   Ritual to make good in this house. Thinking how to do it right. Clean clothes.   Wonderful special at the Seven Lakes café. Shortcake. A man asks are you from around here. It's possible to speak to anyone. Reading The similarillion. Near to crying thinking of "... nor can alter the music in my despite for he that attempts will be my instrument in making things more wonderful, which he himself hasn't imagined."   Taking them into the house and leaving again.   Thoughts sound like quotations.   Rain. The other marsh and inside it a room. Sucking pussywillow this morning.   The experimental station didn't want me. But Luke, it was to have him I would have done it.   Forgot the car lights, battery is flat.   [letter]   I'm here and it's lonely. You're withdrawn. Are you? Feeling toward you - is it you, feels forlorn. Or is it the rain.   The table when set against the south wall met the window sill exactly.   Moving's been sensitive to any little omen, and they're mixed.   My mother when she came with the pickup to help me move bed, table and stove was delighted like I knew, said this is a real artist's house. When I told her I was building a courtyard she said, is that something to do with Jam. I blushed and told her she was smart.   Yesterday we put in the garden, hers, together, something she did with her young children. Moving the string stretched between two sticks, learning how thick to sow the different kinds of seeds, stamping over the potatoes. And now it's raining.   I marveled at how an afternoon's work will feed many people for a long time.   The groundhog under the floor will have to move. They like young plants. A squirrel - I nailed shut the door to the old boot cupboard on the stairs because I'd forget to see it on the way up and bang my head - scratched to be let out. I opened the door and closed it again later. Then heard something scratching to be let in. Have left it open, don't know if it has kids in there.   Geese nest in a marsh nearby, not at the lake.   Have rediscovered sucking pussy willows, taste of honey and willow pollen. 16 Rain. Wet wood. Fasting, first day.   Junk reading. Lonely. Greg's letters. 17 Thursday   Working. First light on the wall. Willows winnow. Birds: blackbirds and small birds. Wood, mortar.   Washed the floors. Work - not able to stop.   Evening light on the wall, oscillation on pink and blue. Outside I suddenly see glory. [Photos: virga, horse virga] Walk onto the field and find the hidden marsh. After that the grove at the pump.   Molasses tea.   John Tofteland helping me start the car, which labours on the field road. Mail, four from Jam.   [letter]   You're angry. I accept. We'll tighten our cheeks. The front room and upstairs front have windows.   An airplane went over low as I broke twigs. I thought of you in it looking to see if the house is inhabited.   Winter here. Cars don't start without electricity. That long lane might never be cleared. Imagined stocking up and snowshoes. Yes it could be done. Flamethrowers. Hire someone to snowplow.   The swans are only here coming and going.   No bewares, no deadlies, no blackflies, for mosquitoes there are repellants or smudge (green grass on fire) in the outdoor stove, a netting. They haven't come yet but in June will be bad. By early August unless it's unusually wet they've gone. Hatchet and axe here. Powersaw would be good though not necessary. Trees fall closeby.   It belongs to the Toftelands. They live on the Olson's road in the 4th mile north from highway, a house set far back on the west side. Tone the old woman, Jesse her husband, John. [map]   In Hythe there are good noon meals at the Seven Lakes Motel. Bring some nuts and dried fruit if you can get them in bulk at the co-op. Use my card - Strathcona Collective - at the East End Storefront - they may have thrown it out - or you can get visitor's rate I think. It will be good for rice. Stoneground flour also.   If you have room bring the foam from Paul's. A couple of cooking pots and whatever you need to cook comfortably. Sheets. How can I know if it's to be winter. Sometime I'll have to work again. Use your wisdom.   I'll make an outhouse. The refrigerator's made [a steel cream can sunk to its neck into the ground under the caragana hedge]. You'll find both by their trails.   18 Still held to her meanness. Angry and sad.   Garden digging, third day. Bought seeds. Cold wind.   Natalie Edwards [of the Canada Council] saying she liked it enormously.   Got the near-death feel.   Marsh mirror family. The two geese seem to patrol.   A yellow-headed bird.   And I forgive you because of it.   The evening call was through rabbits' land to the secret marsh. Felt odd, am I really here in this place no one knows. Blackbird's cry warning. Two pintails rise. Water floods into my boots. I find the scented marsh flowers she brought this morning. Magic and a beauty in the mirror. The sudden one minute sunset light on a tree.   [letter]   The way when you use some words at a certain level of precision the rest of the words are in danger. I learned that in Rilke. You create a reader who wants every word to have that depth or multiplicity and it means half the text is no good. The opposite, I've been finding, is where I start to read and am cross, the words are so bad, and then am glad just to gallop with the pictures, never see another word in the course of the book. Your long words also tack it to word by word reading.   Have a sadness toward you still. I think it's from your evasion. You're here in the dreaming and making of the house. A step so I can sit with you on it. But hesitation when I ask you to bring things, as if I'm putting myself on a foolish branch.   The list that went to Hong Kong in case you didn't get it. From the food co-op stoneground wheat flour, nuts especially almonds and hazel if good, dried fruit, a good cooking oil maybe safflower and a little sesame for Chinese, soy if China Lily isn't good enough, fresh ginger, none here, good teas, a few strong cooking pots and what you need to like to cook. A few plates if you want to eat nicely.   Very small hatchet here but need whetstone.   Sleeping bag if you want to grump off.   Foam from Paul's, and if you have room your other one too.   Gas saw if you want it. We can do without but if we want a winter woodpile we'll need one.   I'd love it if you were here when I got back, on the 20th from Edmonton. 19   Had resolved to give the morning something to hurry awake for, left the pages put forgotten and found under the couch, for early work. Began with language - what am I doin' this for, but the beauty of the thought in the phrases - I had built a companion for myself.   Bath, need one, go past the mail to La Glace. Oil very low. Two letters but the first phrase I see patronizes, glides, and they're earlier than what's has already arrived and so useless.   Mary comes from the quiet living room where she was reading Blake, youthful harlot's curse / blights with plague the marriage hearse. Blackening churches. I ask of her affairs, feel myself head lent on the chair as if feeble, delighting in thinness and wearing white shirt in washed blue jeans.   La Glace, the Saturday store. Feel its calm, protectedness. A man with humor in his mouth, familiar, who? Wayne Moodie.   At the east place there are flames on the hill creeping in a short black and grass thatch. I'm looking for a stone. Find the good triangle. Then go to see if there's another, but the impulse had turned back. Wondering if the impulse knows what's there. Smooth cultivated fields that look alive.   Digging the heavy soaked soil with ice still around the stones in it I was angry, telling her not to come if I can't be with the woman.   [letter] A month. I'm impatient even knowing it'll be hard. I want to hear your voice but will you want hate. The house is a dreamer's and its marsh. Don't come here and despise it. I'm sore too. It's a long time you've complained of me, and has been a very long time alone, nearly a year, suspended and separated, isn't it enough. - Looking for the word - mutation isn't it - I saw I was thinking of a river - you must have done this work some long time ago, I always escaped it (Olivia's Old English classes) - Anglo-Saxon. My mother can almost easily read it, it's Low German. Was showing her Caedmon Sing me something. I like in the poems what he called the parataxis, two columns, and some of the sounds. Some of the spellings are yours.   Going through from Angle-Saxon to American vernacular in one day made me see subordinate clauses in the Shen Chou as miracles. The sophistication of gerunds. I was curious to see y/our variations next to a spectrum. The author praised English as himself and I was liking it too but wanted a non-Indo-European language to compare. Fewer people speak English than speak Mandarin. He said English is most economical, fewest syllables per. A language made by practical winners (you and I speak it because). 20 Sunday but dark. Already from bed, obsession of anger. Type it eloquently. When I say it's my scared hurt ugly sad regained fought for [child] I'm crying. Your sweet child in a box. But have thought maybe I protect her little one out of wrong reverence for my own. Or right. But the letter said I'll die without a beauty in my arms. My one fidelity.   There's the patrol.   Is this month bad for brides. Purification, new clothes. Yes.   They're feeding on the field.   I wanted new clothes, lying on the floor in the fifth day of a fast.   Thin pink. Dug a row. Nettle tea. Squirrel making an easy road through the spruce, just running horizontally. Spruce in the wash water. The marsh's chrysanthemum perfume.   Lying on the grass I opened my eyes directly onto Norway. Red boards. White flowers inside. Spruce tip next to it on the sill, the dark glass. Open windows on that surface. Old chair standing in front, legs set among clods of earth. Camera to try the ways of the beauty of the outside of this house. The red and white and glass says something, the evergreen branches in its eyes, it's fairytale but what. It says heart - sweetheart - clear sweet heart.   Why's the well water muddy, will it clear.   The place is an inner [hope] but the shape of the house says love.   I'm sick of you, your twisted ways. Oh Artemis come lie with me, gloss, your blueblack hair. Or not. White house with lace on the clothesline.   I set a few stones.   21   Pleasure of thinness.   Getting the cupboard with Mary and the three girls. Prying it off its wall with the tire iron. We got the truck out when it stuck in field mud. They loved to help with the cupboard. A beautiful skinny girl in glasses.   Finding its position so the door won't bind. Filling it so the kitchen's clear and what a likeable room with low windows. Going up the stairs looking back at it.   A bench for the front porch table.   Wind. The beautiful boy. With Joan taking nails out of boards. 22 Hot sun. Working bareback. Beginning to set rocks deeper. Paved from the entrance to the fire. Found the place for the triangle stone.   Then the mail and gave all day into candlelight to trying to penetrate, sort, reply, find a position to ten of the most honest spiteful indulging crazy - 23 Sun and sleep more and no longer sun and collect clothes and get in the car. Alone in the Seven Lakes Motel dining room.   The square stone. When it was set it began a different feel of rocks, setting bigger stones sunk deeper. Mayan blocks on the surface. The earlier stones look worse. Found some in the grass here. Big yellow wet stones came up a little translucent, newborn eggs.   When I was digging thinking of the girl in the Datsun mad at her husband. Mad at you. Will I send the stern one after all. Thought I'd settled those. Is it hunger? Make lunch then. Your writing. Ms magazines remembered. Medium but impossible world. You've made me argue. I don't want it. You wanted misery after all and maybe I'll like it.   First leaves. The lonely hit when I told the waitress and realized my awkwardness.   Tasks after the rocks. In the upstairs room setting boards for a bed. Looked good. Then earth feel, rub out lumps, build the bed, blue string stretched the width of a path for Luke hurrying.   It's will she because I allow this abuse want to continue, will it be war. Rebellion, I'll fight and win. No, I don't want that. Yes it might make us smart alert and live, we might get funny and close like she and Sandy. But that low mind! Will I -   Like that most of the day. In the evening urgent to go to the post office. Nice to see new green with pink sky but another mad old one.   Fire, water, food, but go plant four kinds first. Blue green red green.   24   Digging. Triangle stone found its place. Found the reply to you. Einstein's old woman. Satisfied.   In the evening drive with Helmer, Jenny, Bernice, a familiar high. Carrying the dead beaver in a sack. To the Horse Lake settlement. Helmer saying "Lift her up here." The little girl, Bridgitte.   Martin Lake a moose swamp.   "Now it's time for coffee." He offers me turkey. I say I happen to have some here and take it out of my breast pocket.   Holding Jenny's skinny head. 25 To M's for her goodbye. Meant helping in the garden. The wild oats tape. I saw I was pleased to please him. There was a good lunch and giggles. Tomato plants and Mrs Fimrite named me all her plants.   The rare green of forests from a distance, and blue mountain.   Her fluffy hair.   More stones.   The stone pile with pale light under trees, violets and the grass fire burning thinly on the other side of the wire. Color and charm of the rocks.   Driving home cautiously, scared to break an axle. 26 What work for Saturday. Valhalla and dig the Iceland poppies.   Cleaning the squirrel's room. Begin at the closet, cardboard over holes, bring down loose ceiling paper, sweep the walls, wash the floor. Boredom of cleaning but the ugly room is alright now. Squirrel on the verandah impatient while I worked. Had dug easily through the patches again.   Mouse drownd in the nettle water jar.   Evening restless in clean light clothes. Tony Tiller's house in Valhalla. He doesn't know me. The tuning period of the visit. "Warmer, not so vibrant, your survival isn't at stake." Looking out windows he's slow and likes to notice and say he notices. He's a girl, said he read Playgirl. The sunset pink and blue spacecraft against purple.   27   Wind. Reading Fuller to make me smarter to meet you. "Energy event relations." Revelation when he said sometimes it may take years or generations for the answering service to answer.   Coffee on Sunday, speed.   Eager duty these days, don't want to stop to eat, Fuller and then out in the wind to saw a pile of wood and then walking with saw on shoulder looking for violets.   A moment having curved in the bushes when I came out and saw the metal-blown lake with its pale green verge in the wrong direction. I was lost for seconds until I saw the house, a remarkable turn.   Science notes.   From sawing by the pump thought to write Bill about books and successes. Wanted to tell him how classier I am.   Water on the Iceland poppies.   Arabi notes. The love realized in the loved one.   A day hard to bear.   Painted the rest of upstairs.   28   Seeing it wasn't raining, built a fire and lay on the floor reading Tolkien to be somewhere else, the smith who visited another land and gave up his gift. Baking. To the car, will the road hold.   Shock, with no warning a solicitor's letter, a letter weapon releasing a blow into the belly. Knowing I was injured going to J's letter, glad it was there but it's cryptic, written so I can't know. [Roy's solicitor wrote from Cornwall requesting permission to adopt Luke.]   Wrote immediately to solicitor.   Then to get wood. Coming through to the rockpile most of afternoon in the smell of the small poplars, leaves at body height, standing contemporaries. Burnable roots into the trunk and piled at home, sense of yard-making with wood bits trodden at the sawhorse. A likeable curve from the spruce gate to the door. Another curve to the cooler in the west. Liking how some of the stones lead off to grass or path.   Not knowing what else - the rhubarb - found more planted in a line. Remove caragana fallen over it, thinking of Jane, why. The supporting women I didn't thank.   Debate in all this time is about winning or acting to be an upright person, not being taken into too small maneuvers, lonely. Dull, work with dull inability to stop, 'they' taking easy ways making it harder for me.   29   Beaverlodge for nothing, Penthouse and the druggist's flat eyes seizing it. Hungry devouring chops and salad. Buying green work pants. Vanity imagining myself a London filmmaker but ashamed I'm not blasted in work forgetful of body. Look pretty in the mirror brought to fix pants. - Work'll cure.   Oh mer cur y vanished too ear ly. Redwing blackbirds.   Anxious about Luke, working at war with J and Roy, making the defense. What is this sort of time, defensive, defending. What's the threat, does it have to be met or move out of its path. War rises. Is she leaving now. Nightfall, in Hong Kong it's the 30th.   Typing errors in the solicitor's letter.   Rockpile and making. Il se bat, it's battering. Underneath, religion songs these days. I let them sing.   At nightfall work in the yard cleaning the shape between house and the west. Northwest. Putting rubbish toward the east which seems less important.   Sky layer over layer blooming, moving. At the marsh it's a vast underneathness, making the room also.   Fast sort of papers. Work in The tao of physics a familiar home.   This is the right way. The cloud's matrix.   30   Gave myself coffee but not until after beginning back into the physics and being able to understand one concept after another, invincible. Heat, naked. First day of the front porch. Lying down naked to watch thoughts. The currents of wind on skin.   Figs in milk, delicious milk. Hungry all day.   Tone on the phone a young voice, "You could come for dinner if you liked." "Does Jesse sleep in the afternoon?" "Oh no, never," proudly. [Tone Tofteland asks me to take their anniversary portraits.]   Who was here. Her. I thought is this peaceful day because she's back safe. Traffic slight but many. Not until evening, digging out the stone attached to a tree, I realized how intently I'd been with Ian MacIntosh - past and present. Feeling my parting from J, but not yet. Dug the hole under inclined branches.   Chicken supper. Studied a mosquito, watched the next probe a spot on the wrist several times, sank and pulled it out, a very slight sting. Rapidly gorging and pumping, full.   Marsh margin in the evening, fidget male and leading pintails, led to a magic canal territory.   Mattress outside. Clouds watching.   June 1   Up and down have each other. Strange needed charm. "With charm the strange quark had its own partner."   Upstairs working intently through the particle book. A quick move to inhabit the angle-roof room in the front.   Tony lugubrious about Buddhism at the post office. I lay down on the gravel in front of him. He didn't notice.   If strangeness had no stranger companion -   Flow looselip of image.   Inspired, built the stove, suddenly knew it had to be crosswise. Bricks enough easily found in the evening. In the dark watching, looking from all sides feeling for the hottest part. The new fire made hot lemonade. I sat on the square stone looking. Fire showing between bricks. The chimney works.   2   Woke in the upstairs. Overcast. Rebuild the stove before breakfast. Sound of coffee perking.   Washed the floor in the new wood room, Luke's.   Chapter on universes.   Digging and not stopping. Labour with the axe.   In Hythe bad cutlets. Planting.   Cutting out some caragana for a clearer south.   Changed the stove again.   3   Lonely mortality. Heavy and tired after, and even before, the Toftelands. Red shirt, green pants and the self-feel they make. Stopped at the old Wiens house for a dish of crisped manure and risking reputation, the Johnny-jump-ups. Quick dug in seed potatoes with the manure. Oh bored tired flat.   Was fast ordering the photographing equipment to make it impress but would it have been better without the tripod, too much space over their heads. He's staring down, she gets giggles and puts her head on his shoulder. "You're foxy," because I took them by surprise. Window's light and we set up the bank of her plants behind them.   I was not right, a superficial presence and much too fast.   A vision of your frog face through a truck window looking left. In the last two days have heard your voice but in a closed channel, angry.   4   Monday means post office. Three from Hong Kong. She says not for a month. I cry beside the steering wheel.   Confused home. Tired.   Betty Jo's lip and breast. Absent closing my chest with my arms. Not knowing how to look at her on account of not at that moment wanting to dig. Lay on the grass, read magazine stories zonking. Hatred for everyone. Smoked on the step, walked, saw nothing, returned upstairs, read her letters again. Knew she wanted me to call. Wouldn't go.   Drinking a jar of raspberries.   5   Rain early and going to phone. How was that. Attached by sentiment but angry, wanting to hurt, bitter, careless, take three quarts of blood from you and pour it onto my tomatoes. Missing or not even trying. And under it the bewildered link that had me calling rather than not. She said she'd been sleepless wanting it last night   Home suspended hating 'mediocrity,' Paul and Kathy the flattered man, the flattering woman donating her life to make him manly.   Working carelessly through the particle notes seeing the first reading quite well made although personal inventions mostly useless. Working felt love warm in the diaphragm. Wanted it to be later to phone back.   Mary seeming lumpy through, willing to cast Mimi as a bad woman. I indulged discussing J's sickness. Diana's strong voice saying "She looks worse than I've ever seen her."   And back to phone again, and her voice at first had a fast vibration, then she was righteous and we 'tried,' and then I only liked it when I was asking and she telling how it was with Ez and others.   6   Getting uglier again. Beaverlodge to buy $5 new pants. Cherries, is it June? A lot of time in Omni, then the cupboard so it won't disgust you. Then washing. Cold, a fire indoors all day. Cross and despairing toward you.   Lovely pink and I go out to mail letters, then beautiful lute and voice, Elizabethan music as I drive slowly in the afterglow up the road of former home. Stop near the lake to hear out a perfect song. Frog galliard. Fields. At Dolemos' careless, where am I, why am I letting myself be this. And then with two instant coffees some real play coming. Peeking through the holes of her blouse, doing the dishes, feeling balances neg and pos.   Singing. Bernice and I speak for each other. The neutral current.   7   Was held above coming. Let myself sink and was in it.   Days of the new pants.   I make your bed. I hate you. Wash the floor for you. Clean out the car. Set in order   Walter Webber arrived when I was unaware with nothing on. Gathering the blankets. He whistled to show he was coming. A bleached face. Moment when he took off his hat and there is the little head. Long fingers. I am taking positions and thinking, staring, what is an old man. His elegant vocabulary. "There are some who can't figure you." Storeman's pleasantness as if sniffing.   When there was sun to wake I said oh it's lifted. Then it was cold again.   [June 8-20 the London festival, I take the bus from Beaverlodge to Edmonton to fly from there] London Immersed in one test after another. No seeing what'll come.   He said in motion all his attention is taken by knowing where he is. He needs a few minutes before he can talk.   What's the quality. Speak to the one behind. It's the one in front who's controlled.   She's not right. She was speaking as if an American. The feeling of doubling. Was the voice ever her own.   -   Something cheerful. Smiling at the rosiness of her face I miss their dark thin suspicious faces. Watching without vaulting into the ugly.   Something still sees, startles at how much more it could see. They've withdrawn, leaving me with the one I said I wanted back. And what is she. She's plain. She still looks. Still eccentric. He said, I like your film very much. Cheerful, says hello, socially improved. Lights to the white spirits. Doesn't suspect. Deke was suddenly quick and I barged into him for Vincent and he made it faster.   -   "When they spoke about your film did they speak in their false voices?" "Yes."   Flower pictures with the dead leaves on. It mentioned the sense of hesitating at the - seeming to hesitate at the - beginning of another dimension. Not another dimension. Risking existence without safety for the one who wants to be better. Draw of the refused.   "It's all in creams. There's a very large space around me. I'm on a line, like a tightrope. At the end of it there's a platform and a door. I want to get to the door but I'm afraid of the space. If I look around the line disappears but when I look forward it's there again. It's not a real door, it's like a shell. The door is open and the cream is even whiter inside it." "Oo." Laughs.   "In the circus atmosphere a still point." What speaking formally can Martha imagine to want.   "It was more like the door folded in, folded in and there was a lighter cream inside and the doors were a darker cream slightly, and then the outside of the door was brighter just at the rim. Then it just didn't end, it just faded into the space. I sensed I was here yet I felt I was somewhere else lower down."   21 June   [When I get back on the bus Jam is in the house with her dog.]   Beaverlodge. Sat up, saw its lights coming. My body knew.   Car not there. Mud. Saw its quiet flank. A note there before I had time to think it. Gave it a kiss and car started. Opened an oil tin with the crowbar.   North opening flat mist, unfamiliar roads. In the last mile turned off the lights. Smells, head out window sniffing cold spice. Lake blanked in mist. Boundary trees. The corner when it came was unfamiliar, space changed in the white.   On the road stopping the car, walking. Looking at the road. Abruptly the house before I expected it in the white. The little car. Kissed it. At the spruce gate a moment seeing caragana blossom, it had turned summer. The height of grass a flood. Garden, standing looking. Hear a sleeping sigh. At the last the steps and latch and dog greeting intense but silent.   Morning, creases and light of the mosquito net.   22   [My sister Judy and her husband and son visit.] At the treeplanters' camp I argued for my employment. 23 [first day planting for Dirk Brinkman Reforestation]   On the Argo, plastic 8-wheel drive, lurching. Mud carved. Ted not judging and thinking to ask, what do you do.   Working thinking about learning work. The come-along, a winch. Screefing, hoedad a mattock. Standing at the trucks with two north country voices, Dr Finlay and Janet, delight at how they play not badly.   Forest bewilderment, making lines where I can't see. They help.   Bodies. The big lip doesn't have his hat on because. Not very genderly except the mother cook. Watching their skills. Ted's boot knot. Women glowing at their men at table. A plastic-sheeted sunroom around the heater. Readable books.   24   Thinking how to work the areas. It's orientation and I think about orientation, areas taken and held in the next movement, what's done and how.   Nakeds in the sweat lodge. Swimming easily in the pond.   Déjà vu startle, treeplanters sweeping southwest, Ted standing next to the truck.   Gabriel and his beautiful wife. They stand together each holding children.   Looking at persons. Are they there. They all seem not real. And you too little head.   25   In the crewcab on the left side, looking entirely out the window at clouds without description, white, not white, edges, parts, strong contraction from blue and blue concentrated.   Thinking what, how to set eyelines, making temporary knowledge of terrain without any other use. Why learn, why give a day to learning this ground. How to choose landmarks.   They're happy and work well.   Wanting to give up, don't want to plant these little parts. Reinventing technique.   Gabriel's wife naked, her eyes and long legs, standing pouring water down her hair. The baby in a bathtub saying da da da looking across the road at me. They're always at the bathtub, she heats the water for when we come home.   The cook made a cake for Genique because he said it was his birthday. The dancer I met at the line.   Ted's mild plot testing. Calm around him.   Mosquitoes on neck and face. I have a white tuche on my head.   Ground and mattock. 9' misgauged.   26   Unskill. Hear my uncomfortable voice.   They're loose but attractions changed.   It begins to be real and then I start to fail. Feet hurt. Heavy awkward slow, no other identity.   Bathtub, fire, sun, breeze.   Back the car into a ditch.   So many big breasts. She said she'd broken up and bought land. How much she likes the textures of weaving.   Their energy inventing anything.   27   When she woke, "Be careful driving today."   An area, I took more, blue ribbon, breeze. Fed, rested, paced right, white shirt, bags emptying.   Rain as we came in on the Argo, the silver slants.   In the morning a driving movie, dust, the beautiful dog's head mooning back, a hand on a knee, the back of a head in a kerchief.   Ted's eyes. The other blond man whose balance pushed at me. Sauna and it's easy to swim, body lies lighter Persons easing as if yesterday was hard change.   28   She was standing up in bed catching mosquitoes. I felt the bed as the planting slope, deadfall humps, thrashing, bites, ache in arms and feet.   Dolemos' love made smooth face.   In Hythe the people passing on the sidewalk, an old woman in a pink dress, the man who said Poor fellow, poor fellow. Then the parade of children each looking down at us and Ezra under the tree.   Telling the Czap story. Someone's coming. It's the treeplanters come to get water. Room loud. Menlo, Brian upstairs. Ted.   Everyday garden and stones, pans.   Talking as if it's possible.   Mice ran squeaking across the floor.   A yellow crescent nearly due west.   29   Cleaned the workroom. Sang looser and deep though not new. Sat on the triangle in the garden.   She wept because of the Indian boy. We find ourselves in bodies, good positions. "There's that and then there's you." "I'm not sure you're together." "I'm sure." Spoke to a person in yellow shirt standing in live grass. We're eating salad leaves grown in the garden.   A mouse follows her and looks at her she says.   Anna cut poplar branches, I said it would take away the squirrel smell. We gave her a mattress for under the carpet.   Genetic pool, the races mixing, 1200 babies after Niemegan.   Rolling toward kisses. She read Morris on the future paradise that's now.   The candle bracket and its house shadows. Two green gas lamps.   Anna prettiest when I said can I help you with something, shall I draw you a map.   Invitation of the flowers' shadows on walls. She was homesick. 1 July The song dividing into two lines. We look surprised.   Working on the room.   I was sent up to sleep. Wake to the sound of betrayal, free laughing.   I saw you so often today, your body and your face.   Morrisons' house that's gone, I dreamed it boarded, looked where the wedding party had been.   2   In the morning saw the road too sticky to risk.   At breakfast an art-science debate so Jam's guest and I could war. What a whiny unfocused mind. Failed to penetrate a simple situation because I didn't want to be close to her, because she was the woman I want to have left out. J angry because when she was raptured I wasn't.   Judy haggard and then pink. Rudy saying he didn't want to say what acid was for him. Michael said "It showed me my inside self, it taught me I'm not my body." Arguing about the spectator.   Anna got stuck and left.   Cut wood in the wet.   3   Early. Infinity sky is back. Waking alone. Fire after wet ashes.   Try the road. Delicate touches on wheel, brake and pedal. The road has ditches.   Cooking breakfast I shout to loosen it. You're a sulking father.   A yellow butterfly into right edge of the frame is there among yellow caragana. White cloud between gate spruce.   Put off work to help polyfill. The veil removed we are both awkward, mourning. Stubborn. Many stories not told yet.   Marsh. A mallowy flower. These are the grass days. It's feather overlaid with water drops. In the garden tall young things, children, beets. The cumulous' core blooms out.   Story of the drunk dancer, other story of the London artist. "You tell stories that let you go on." My feelings hurt. She said the drunk dancer moved her more.   4   Mist. In the last miles of mud the car bottom scraping.   Kitchen I'm first in. Brian's language, "When those who are fleeing have fled." Slough a blue green mush, head under, shaking out their hair.   Joann, "That's a very good poem." "Which?" "I don't know, I could feel it."   Her under the blue coverall, hat on hat backwards, little nose, painting the ceiling. Rubber boots on the table, roller on a stick.   Back to the season of yellow fields. At home looking and looking at the garden rows. Washing dishes, sweeping out the porch and kitchen.   Once and future king for Mary. Ed's bare head vulnerable under the car.   part 4 up north volume 2: 1979 february-october work & days: a lifetime journal project