| up north 4 part 2 - 1980 february-april | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
February 20 1980 [On the train to Vancouver] Refusing: social disheartening That there's never been a cinema, and it's closest to both night and day. Two taxi drivers, one talked like Frank, scrupulous, bragged of his driving record, told me how he was lucky to be saved, complained of giving up a new mission because he couldn't. Said he hadn't thought about heaven, wouldn't want to know about the Essenes because all we need to know is in the scripture we have. A business failure. Thin mouth, hard to look at, told his ancestry, couldn't see the small type, was superior to people without their lights on. I felt sorry for him. 75 cents tip. Other a sloppier slightly pitted man said he'd driven big machines in the bush, used language. Climax growth. Bragged his knowledge of conifers. Asked how I'd voted and made room for me to pour out a passionate complaint about the concept of nation, teased me, argued about feminism, heard what I said, made a delight and I gave him a dollar without quite meaning to. Told me about lodgepole pine, crown land, blackflies and mosquitoes. - She made a barometer from bearded oats sewed on card. The blue-tiled charcoal stove Beets and potatoes in clean ashes in an urn in coals (poplar will do) Lamb's lettuce? Some sweetened hot wine in my battered little silver cup 22 Doubt: because in writing, wanting to write, you're held to slow knowing. Levertov saying what writing brings, but contrived. My sense that I won't have the surrounding unless I sacrifice writing. That has to do with wanting other people and then the operations not known unformed of object-reading radio senses that art mistakes. Tile philm perceiving with a good machine 23 Vancouver, Hotel Europe Red-orange can I see veins or cellular. Changing key. Green. Intense and maybe mosaic centre and out to corners red green red green red green different lengths. I'm afraid wanting to close but wanting to soften around a pole axis backbone. Closing would be lowering the eyes. It's so close. When the light comes it's, because my eyes are open, as if it's immediate to my whole body. It's light like a presence. the red when it's steady, I thought of poppy crystals, watermelon, not granular, cellular, infused, between pink and orange, hot, when it's steady goes paler orange almost white. in the red green alternation sometimes yellow. It's speed so I can't see. I know there's shape [sketch] and I think I assumed, in a square. When the red's brief it's the same shape. Oh camera with skin over it - put an eyelid and see eyelid at distance. Silk layers, tissue net. Camera with automatic. It's focused as close as it can and the light comes from beyond. Afternoon 23rd
What was it - what's this - choosing the slightest sense of the day to 'make something' of - imagining travel as movement of state, and this room, that I know is here again, room, come and go. This morning light down the well to the table (light thread squares), blue, pigeons' red feet, the place I didn't know was coming. Is imagination a spoiled skill like language and refound in the same way. Description's pause. -
miscellaneous register of one cast out into the wilderness the prefaces to his poems of official travel, which were intended to console her loneliness classic of waters, annotated on an excellent frontier, but visitors are rare, or do not write of what they do here The climax community of the true tropical rainforest a dim quiet seemingly empty realm, with an open floor of quickly decaying leaves, and great buttressed trunks supporting a huge canopy, populated by flamelike winged creatures almost invisible from below -
D's chalk bones so beautiful message shd be read do you want x-ray eyes "afraid that I'm being too much myself" Put up a post and a fog surrounds it. In the light experience I was trying to see what was in front of me and closely aware of imagination being next to sight so I was making a decision about whether the pattern I thought I saw was there or seen because thought. A sense of being able to decide picking through Thoreau's cleanness The assistant on the train, in the gare waiting. Saw his face over a uniform at the staff door, roux, narrow, no use to describe but I can see it. What did I see. Alert, peaceful. Lifted chin forward. Across from gazing into each other's faces I was seeing his paleness. Wanted to say liver and attribute it to his eyes but I'm not certain. Pale, attentive, in a way brave. When he'd been there a while I thought to listen to know what else I could tell about him, whether he was sending something (because of the gaze) under the exchange about liking or judging (he told the fat woman "I was a long time sitting like this," gestures, "such a love."). And what I got was a slight warm friendliness in body and noticing his real mouth. "It is such a joy for me to serve people." I think I believe him. Pale seedy bold red clown theologian. His training. Art of peacetime. 24th Dorothy Richardson in a party of old ladies, when I began to tell her about Pilgrimage she brought her notebook, looked like a book, opened it to pencil handwriting in sections like her printed books but each section was questions, notes, thinking, her prewriting, and I imagined her writing directly into print, from it. No she hadn't kept any journal from the time she began. Our heads together when I asked. Looking across to see her dancing with a greyhead. Foxtrot? Cross facing legs and hop. In Paul's wallet photograph of Judy quite fat and buxom in a cute pose. Other side I'm sitting coy with my dress opened down the back, first look I'm flattered, then see pimples down my back and my claw foot turned enlarged forward. My head is oblivious, posing itself. Falling asleep memory of a last night's dream, feeling it close to somewhere in another dream. I can designate it. Could it be transient. It just was. Another. Driving black rain, only a small area of the windshield. I don't know where the road's going. Wipers on. Wet black road. Am I following up a track. Cars piled up somewhere. A trick? A car has slid sideways into mud in the ditch half buried, not mine, an MG. Imagining body looking after the formation of a baby in the way it knows what to do, does it quietly. It's the mother of us both. Works in the dark. My old mother, will she need to be looked after, after looking after me. Pilot's light on, ship coming behind dark one can of course see in the root. The lover's there to thank it. The ethereal forces should be thought of as functioning in planes or surfaces and originating peripherally not centrally from all sides of the universe toward earth. Afternoon fasting weakness dream. Leaving Carmichael's house (with a vegetable) without speaking to her. Being called / dumped / reluctant / scared into the whole collective, in its room sorrowing and stiff and seeing just how everybody is. (Weeping, clear immediate sense of where it is, "but I must find a position.") - the goddess and members of the expedition In a foggy light-holding air fingertip look Construction of a building is so powerful a gift buried under the corner or threshold a newborn baby, or figurine A house around a court, in the course of time came to form a city within the city of Mari. Streaming down her robe, water from the jar in her hands. The robe's carved in currents and three fish going upstream toward the belly. Red blue and sand color white and black. Brown paper.
- How did you all look. Blond child out of the door. I know one back. When I cross the slit between two walls one's smiling and doesn't see. Cross back looking, thinking of leaving. Someone out the door who isn't believing but takes a position as if, is pulling me, in not guessing or knowing, says plunge in. Already pretty twin and I have had time over her shoulder to see how we are. She's very well, has a new style that's better than the version of her old one I've got on. Inside it has to be said resisting despairing bluffing toward the at ease. Except for opaque dark, I have my shoulder at her and don't look. Light pole in tall boots is looking steadily. There's the heart and knows. I'm dragged steer. "Where's Jam?" comes direct. "She's in the snow, working." What's the fright. Not being ready and yet went: and that means either being pulled or else being divided and not wanting what 'I' want. Profile of the newest, pudgy, she isn't well. "Look who's here!" exclaim. Roy's sickle face, an animal growing in it, yellow, what does she want and why did she make a picture to call me. Another hard eye comes into. This home. 25 That I am and have to be helpless in some ways. If the hemispheres compete for control of orienting and attention, which way the eyes move when figuring out. Rt hem, left. When the right brain is spoiled they miss the left half of things. [sketch]
27 Little marble cup. Cut like a goblet, can see the veins, really follow them to the other side, hollowed and translucent. Can see flat crystal specks in it. Love and am fascinated by it, feel it's vulgar to own it. Want some wonderful things, orchid, orchid, shirt, girl, dish. Paul said oranges are divine. Judith [Sandiford]. When she was in front of me under her umbrella I looked up disoriented from a corner, was it the way she looks and the division it makes in my attention. I want to get away or else stare at the strands of hair, color of her face's skin, the thickness of her glasses. She's healthy in her cells, and looked less helpless, but speaking to her is being cornered, a skinless child I couldn't bear, except, I thought, out of her body in work. Paul under his umbrella, in green dufflecoat, alley, body at the waist, pictures of space capsules, the way it's easy for me to read his images, "He'd make a nest in your ear." 'Classic' meaning authentic. When I go into the geometry book I have a sense of a limb of existence or invention, like physics or music, where something can be made if I want to go out with that shape around me, but I am not sure it's worth the time. And already think I won't believe the axioms although what if the exercise opens a sense in me like the sense of the Milky Way, that must have been prepared in some of these studies. Color of skin under the skylight. The man telling the story of having his wife soul-fucked [probably in Penthouse] and why it's so moving. "Crying quietly." You'd know. When Paul wanted to release my story of confinement in Alberta I found myself frightened, or felt coffee fright, and thought I must have got my fright located in its extreme, I mean not placing it safer.
Bring movement into the picture, to experience freedom. Feeling the assumptions in the writing as collisions Brought last night. The 'commune,' Pooh, a man who was leaving, but saw in the room behind him, wall and ceiling open to black night and stars. Glimpse going by the door, Luke. Pooh touched the elastic across my back. Roy took off the padded bra. I knew I'd want him (haven't for years.) and had to decide about Jamila. Was Luke going to be on the plane. - A projector that could have a rectangle size of the wall and suddenly narrow it to the size of a concept, double it to recover some other part. Giving oneself to 'infinity' in order to have a sense of freer movement in thought. Does it work. Neverland where parallel lines meet. - Embattled immobile in use of language because experience I don't know. Not being able to do and remembering getting closer but it wasn't right and so punished for leaving by having settled back into the lump I came from. 28. Dope is the answer, smoke and clear. Speed up. Come out no longer sullen, but I won't. Maggie staring between the sheared sides of her hair. When she's in front of me I'm looking at her teeth and into the color of her pupils, back, she looks as she did. Have something to tell her, looking at her holding herself back, and then giving forward gladly when I've brought her to something she loves. Oh hawk. Was I always wrong. No but I want to know you as if you weren't in your village. Is it really you this morning, Rose Red. The weight of looks, Zoe's beauty. On Roy's wall his daughter with naked breasts, yellow along her thigh. That he made something so lovely. What am I holding out for. Tight little noting-down clenched frozen holding out for. Are they opaque and ambiguous because there's something they think will betray itself, addiction. I wonder if the clench is sexual. Dreaming dreaming of how I'd revive in your arms. Read note about how in love-making the brain produces speed, being cut off makes chemical withdrawal. [*sketch of sky platform] The awful truthkeeper watching my mistakes. What're the rules for: dignities. Refusing tricks that work because I don't like my picture doing that and thinking it'd be right to get the liveliness without its stupid meanings. I mean the sense of ranking. I want to know some other kind of people. It's the machine by which people of one body force each other, but to what. An ordinary easy prose with exact thought. Agee's drunk to do it. The little eggs coming out of my skin. Ruined rooms and scavenging in them. Daphne's reading. Mourning how mobile her consciousness, angry she'd decorated everything with pretty thoughts, not able to follow well enough to know if she'd described something or not. Carole's brown beauty. Rhoda chanting parted words, a-tension, with objects put in among. Admiring each other. Having and working that poet's voice for so long. Thinking of Yeats, what he did I could, balance, then replaces: but only if I think of myself in that way a head in a street/flood of heads, in history. Ou de confuses paroles. The other sort of space is that, maybe something else too. In De Chardin descriptions of turning around and finding the backing. Writing a dream, if it's written carefully it can be read some day, and other accounts are the same. The transparent construction of the model. The story of a navigation / and seeing through / and letting imagination teach / and learning to know or acknowledge the exactness, without that concern pinching me dead. Make a structure in imagination, write in it but with much more known than said. In HD the way I'm enjoying myself parallel to her in weightless construction. Pool film. Her calm reminds me of you. Judy. Whiteness of the skin on her long skull. The way she preached to Akasha. Delicate line of her bum. She bleaching out under her obligations. Oh can I unlock you. But when I see her idiosyncrasy it seems she's meant for a bone. Whose rage makes some inwardness I'll never know enough to bring into her sight. Guilt knuckle. Sister. Safe knowledge of a completed love somewhere back there. Grim fine bone of Luisa in her hard times. What do I know in Mary, as cloud, a dark and curious, young. Him, I know from me, building himself a model. I mean that I am discerning, sometimes, the rate of ponder that's his (him). Both Judy and I have the lock. The gift of desperations: make what I can, but careful, not too easy. her experience in Egypt In the story the dream's told, and then the dreamer's small memory of it. [letter] Dear soul - Hotel Europe for a month. They'll take messages but won't call me. 43 Powell. 27 Wednesday - wonder if I can talk to you - reading at the Blue Mule - used to be Roy's studio, Carole Rhoda Daphne. Roy was host and gave out saki. Rhoda sat on her heels and read things I couldn't follow at all except for the last, that I could follow because it was Gertrude Stein. And Daphne's multiplicity, couldn't follow her either. Thought of how if you'd heard them you'd have formed things to say. Couldn't, was miserable and very lonely. Daphne and Rhoda pouring appreciation of each other's. Walked home along Powell moaning (humming), police car slowed. This isn't impossible. I was feeling so sorry for myself that incapable of modernity (and am certain you're not) and regressed to a lump, more exact, the sense that compared to 'theirs' my being is as if immobile. A large sadness. Or am I misunderstanding. Or is it that I'm working in some other method toward something else. I wanted to tell you the sadness and was also ashamed to, not understanding, dismay, unworthiness, if there's something there and I don't understand it, can't adhere to it, and half the rest of them can. ("The ology." "I love it.") Struggling in this, don't want to give it to you raw (you'll say you've heard it before but you haven't) cause you may think things about it you don't say. No, why it's serious is that among 'them' is where I've sometimes been understood as nowhere else and it's the possibility of being unable to reciprocate that makes me wild with sorrow, no, enraged pride. What's missing is the criticism and dislike of their writing. I hate "the ology" and everything like it. Raining on the skylight. Diana and R both seemed to say they think it's great you're alone in the snow working. I need to hear from you. Still wanting to tell you more of the sense of being frozen, as I sometimes feel you are too, it's mulish dug down holding out, ie I know I could thaw it with dope even drink maybe almost any body, like feeling I could make you love me by melting myself with dope, and yet refusing to do it that way. Grimly and desolately primly immobile, I have to find another way. The psychologies are closeby and accuse, but no no. The closest accusation is that I did find a way into the current but couldn't bear the rush there, and just froze myself up again and am back. None of this way of thinking it is any good, the pain's intense. 'Work' not far off but what's it good for. So many mistakes in the machine, how can it go on. Is some of this pain yours. To be in it is why I'm here but what next. One clue: I have to buy an orchid! Do you understand that. Yes I'm afraid you do. In Roy's studio a xerox of one of his daughters under a yellow umbrella naked but for a yellow cloth around her middle. Exquisite shoulders and breasts. Maddening. Nightfall in another room, oh much better. Window with a tugboat, squeaks and songs from the tracks, two brick walls, Mozart's loving me from over the desk. Shan has left Paul for another man who, a year ago, came back from Toronto and found his girlfriend of nine years had hanged herself two weeks earlier. He's said to be very beautiful. This morning Paul remembered - this is three months since she left - that in his boxes he has a ceramic hand made from casts of the the dead woman's hand. She made it herself, I think, she was a potter. Gave it to a man she had a little affair with. That man lived downstairs from Paul, and when he moved, years ago, said to Paul, "Would you like this." I asked to see it. Paul went through his boxes, brought it up, washed it. Black with glaze on the fingertips, very small flat hand, all the details of skin, but some imposed scratches in the palm. Friday night. 'They' ask are you coming into town, I say May (will it be) after planting time. Do you have anyone to talk to? I say I don't know. You're going to find out what spring is. I wish you were happy and would just tell me how your days are, what happens outside and inside, as if to somebody away on necessary business. Has the length of the winter discouraged you. Or loneliness. ("What's she doing up there?" "I don't know, I think she's working.") Josie visited this noon. She has cut off her hair. What's left is orange. She's wearing punk old clothes, tight-leg pants with zigzags. Her extraordinary long head. She looks beautiful and got all my secrets, fast, easy. Looking at her face or into or through her face, pits and rednesses and vivid light clear eyes, I heard my voice going lower, gathering power. But when she said she was embarrassed by the journal she'd written when we were in one house I found myself crying. The thin little bodies of these friends. And their artist hands. Controlled aging of teenagers. Touches me. Josie's little warm ribcage when I hugged her! And her pharoah's head. T C and R came yesterday to the Europe bar, we had supper downstairs. Chat chat nothing nothing. They all say this room is amazing. Would you like it. Yes probably, maybe you'll see it, if I can't get onto treeplanting maybe there'll have to be another kind of job here. I haven't forgotten you need money. Oh Blackhair I was remembering some of your ages, angry to be having to look for a girl writer away from you, when you have - etc. Maybe Joyce will. The restfulness of the way that away from you men are nothing. Listening to Bach imagining how she'd touch, curiously, one of those slight bodies moving all over the bed, small pointed soft breasts, warm. "Getup" in the corridor. Is that Don. "Get up Don." He's talking to himself. I have a look. He's on his hands and knees. "Do you want a hand?" He hasn't heard. Looks up startled. "Shall I pick you up?" "You can't pick me up." "I can try." He's a foot taller but he's just bone and one of his legs is plastic. "I was comin' out of one o' them spells." "Put your arm here. Were you going to the bathroom, do you want to go back to your room?" "I wasn't goin' nowhere, I don't know how I got out here." Set him in his chair. "Do you have one o' them pain pills, my leg is hurtin' me bad." His blue eyes. Old sailor. We talked about Hong Kong one visit. This afternoon he needed a dark blue for the ship's shadow in the water. I had one crayon, from the train, dark blue. - Oh mouse it's time there was a letter under the door. It's rain. Welcome to the Ho-tel Cal-i-fornie Most of them live here. One earring on the electrician. Claire in a ponytail wearing her cardigan buttoned down the back. They're very good I want two more. And tea. Side order of fries in Chinese. How you doin? Got a new outfit? Where you go? I don't see you for a long time. Cause they told me never to come back here that's why. She pulls a white garterbelt buckled to grey stockings out of a bag. Wong in a waiter's red vest though he's boss. He's professionally friendly to Indians punks drunks same as businessmen. Feel sick in the library but better here. Could I come put in the garden with you. The boys in parkas come from school. Daddy-a. Do their homework at the back table. Can't read. LynnLynnLynn you're burning a hole in your petticoat. Dammit Janet.
Yesterday's happinesses - this room, writing J the sense of space, and de C, slowly considering and writing, erasing, walking out to look for flowers, weighing oranges, finding the stainless steel basins, and having them heap a meal in one. Reading Helen having J and Maggie together in it, sense of know what I want writing to be like, looking in the mirror seeing a pretty belly imagining Kore in this hotel room with her weekend clothes. (In the streets of Rome February and March hands in her pockets free girl, but my boots are better than anything I had then, wonderful boots.) Dancing. Seeing x come in, the looseness of liking to see, and Sandy at the door. How did she look, shirt, was it the turquoise color I've been looking for, her hair gone up, beak, one of the birdhead gods, parakeet. Wave and look to say all's clear and she knows it too and can come sit with me. Shouting, she's telling me about her pictures, I have my ear next to her and am looking down to give us the privacy we need, having our heads so close. She wants to motion and her small hand appears spotlit rubbing fingers with thumb, just under my eyes. I want to talk about the shock and comedy of it, she stays with the pictures. "I don't know what that gesture means." A transaction. Then a speech. "Before it gets loud again I want to say if you need anything -." I'm marveling, what's she saying, what would I need, is she saying come see me, is there a blur in this, two drinks. "You know where I live, I'm in the phonebook." "Are you changing?" "What do you mean?" "I don't mean anything, just the question, you seem different, you're more open here," (forehead), "you look happier." So she got me to say what's in the middle: "I think I'm more like I was before, it was a very traumatic time," (not liking that I'd used the word), "this has been a happy day, I feel like I'm twenty years old and in a city." The tigertooth woman, glad to see her looking softer. And her friend does too, they look as if they've come here from crying in bed. You beautiful boywomen. And liking to look at her so she'd look back. The woman who sat like an eraser, asked me to dance, when she had her glasses off had a look of soft hesitant, reading Brothers Karamazov and Anna Ka- (was watching) -rina. "I really enjoyed them, I really respected how much they'd observed." And the girl on the bus, "Do you have a life in some kind of political work?" "I used to." And from that very quickly the story of an anthropologist teacher, his movement, eldest daughter, this rose girl leaving home high school to live in the political family, whose oldest daughter, when she saw it wasn't going to work (her father's vision) but that she'd be unable to live like ordinary people, suicided. On the dance floor turning through the crowd seeing faces looking into mine smiling, oh extraordinary, shy, and the girl pointing her feet in a jig. When I came in there seemed so many men, I didn't want to see them, then when it was dancing it was women's bodies all around. A thick little body dancing expertly my country people's way, with a thicker little woman in her arms. Loving and telling you, and who'd brought the letter to put under my door. [from Jam's letter]
Leah the woman who dreams of water every night, and her look. And the Tibetan sheath! Black green and white inlay, perfect artifact, inside, bundled, two brass cups and their plates, ivory chopsticks, knives, ladles, toothpick, forks. Given to a general, I wanted it to give to you, like a scabbard, on a silk rope, but really a camping kit. And this morning, the one cider was too much, a dream first of packing clothes and making beds after a visit (Sieberts), Rudy's tumble of clothes, must be the Wrights, and then being with two women. We were bent over each with our bum against the sex of the one behind, we were rubbing mindlessly, when I saw (I was in front) us in a mirror, ass-waggling. I disliked it and thought to stop, and then shock, realized I was in this mindless way making love with Sandy, thought I could do it better and began to move more thoughtfully, but what was I doing there at all, disintegration. Seems to come to the thrill of the soulfuck story and whatever vulnerability reading and liking it there, gave me to something in that house? A man married to a middle-aged well made blond woman, who isn't a mother, but manages a bank, has heard from a man he knows that a black stud can be bought to soulfuck his wife. They're both attracted. Three times he sets it up, she backs away. The fourth, they've come to a motel room, the black man is there, the wife is afraid but the husband won't let her go now. He tells her to take off her clothes and show the man her body. She takes off her dress, slip and shoes, but can't go any further. She understands that she can't escape. She's crying quietly. Her husband takes off her bra. She stands with her arms wanting to cover her soft middle-aged breasts. Her husband pushes her to sit, and then to lie back on the bed. He pulls down her panties and pantyhose. Her face is open and wet. The black man is next to the wall on the right, behind the husband. No one knows what he thinks. Husband and wife are close in the midst of a moment they know to be final. The husband puts his hands to her ankles and pulls her legs as far apart as his arms can extend. He's looking at her sex, watching to see it show through her hair. She is looking at his face, but throws a glance at the black man, who is also looking at her sex, and still clothed. The husband nods to him. He takes off his shoes and socks, unbuckles his belt, takes off his jeans. His cock stands up in front of him. Both husband and wife are looking at it. It's large and curves up past the bottom line of his teeshirt. The husband says "Kiss her pussy." The man kneels by the hotel bed, bends over, puts his mouth to her hair. The husband is standing next to him, his face in a spasm. The wife's eyes are closed, she stops crying, is tensed. The black man's mouth is moving slowly like a suction cup. The woman's thighs jump. Her hands are flat on the bedspread. The husband says "Suck her nipples." The black man kneels between her thighs and puts his mouth to the end of her soft slid breasts. She's crying again in little gasps. The husband isn't visible. The black man has his weight on his hands as he leans over the woman. His cock bumps her belly as he slides his mouth. The wife opens her eyes and looks at the husband, standing on the right behind the black man. The husband says "Now fuck her." The black man sits back on his heels on the bed. The wife moves up slightly to make room. He puts his left hand on her thigh and at the same time touches her vulva slightly to see if it's wet. He opens the lips with his thumb and forefinger, which show pink in this gesture, as do the stretched insides of her labia. Then he puts his palms next to her shoulders and lowers her cock toward her. He murmurs something. She is looking at him, says "It's too big, I can't," throws her eyes to her husband, who says nothing. The cock penetrates slowly, with weight and consciousness. The black man looks at her face, opened in an O, and then closes his eyes as he leans carefully. He pulls it back a little, to oil the tip at her entrance, slides back, the first length faster, to the depth he'd found. Leans. She cries out "Oh! He's taking the rest of my cherry, that you never could get." He partly withdraws again. She's very wet near her surface. Slides forward, and to the depth he'd found, presses. She opens slowly in front of him. He works her carefully with little sliding motions. She gives way, her mouth is stretched open, her knees come up on either side of him, his head is down near hers. Now he rests his weight on her shoulders and slides his hands, palms up, under her bum. As her thighs rock up toward her chest, he waggles very slightly. Her head falls to the side. "He's fucking me so deep, he's fucking me so deep." He pulls back, slides in, pulls and slides. He brings his knees up on either side of her hips. Now he's sitting back slightly, spreads his hands on her breasts, rocks. She is open to the back. He's there. silence. He puts his mouth to her left breast, pulls back on the nipple as he pushes forward into her cunt, milking her, rocking. Her arms come around his neck, his large hands come forward and enclose the sides of her skull, she's rocking with him, her face is white like a light. He lays his face on her chest, sideways, facing the same direction as hers. The husband lies down next to them, his forehead near his wife's shoulder. He feels the movements of the bed under them, penetrating his sex and abdomen in waves like shadows. The wife and the black man stop moving, lie plunged together at the root, watching their movement continue in the subtle currents each still feels in the whole extent of the body. This has been in the afternoon. -
Ehrenzweig The pictorial space of Bridget Riley Art International Feb 1965 But none of this has meaning apart from a final unpredictable total transformation and the emergence of a presence. expressive quality comes through the structural means, through honouring both Riley for the sense of discipline. evoke certain states of feeling or mind I never jump to conclusions. I never presume to know. I go through phase by phase every time because there may be something different in the demands I am making on this form, which may miraculously throw up new possibilities. Of course absolute precision is needed in even the smallest fragment. something moving in one direction on one level and another direction on another level Sometimes a situation may carry these statements and antistatements two or three deep, sometimes it will collapse because there isn't enough emphasis on the three or four major relationships. [letter] I'm happy in this room, tell you everything all day, are you getting some of it, I write it in my journal as if that's the telegraph. Last night Friday night alone on the bus (with Helen in hand), unfamiliar bus, 6 Fraser, to Polish Community Centre, Women's Day benefit, thinking to meet or see some I'd like to meet or see. And did. Had been expecting to find her, Sandy at the door, I saw her before she saw me but then it was wave and smile, we both knew it was all clear. They came and sat with me. How did she look. When I saw her across the room shirt was it the turquoise color I've been looking for, her hair gone up, finer as if she's faced into an electrical field, beak, one of the birdhead gods. Parakeet. (When I was finding and writing this tried the expression on my face, it was really her, shocked me. I took it off so it wouldn't stick.) Music is loud, we're shouting, when she's telling me abut using the instamatic in Greece I have my ear turned close to her mouth and am looking down at my black lap. That's so we can be distant enough to have our heads so close. Suddenly she wants to motion, it's a gesture that's one of the words in her sentence, her small hand appears spotlit just under my eyes, placed so I'll see it, thumb rubbing across the fingers, so comic and shocking I want to stop the conversation and talk about it. What was that. An improvisation. She set a gesture into my line of vision. A transaction. I was aware thinking it out that if I wrote it you'd likely know it better than I can. An amazing connection to you, knowing I could tell it. But I couldn't tell her. What else, later she said if I needed anything I should get in touch with her, I was puzzled, didn't know whether she was inviting me to visit or what she thought I'd need, she said it like making a speech she'd rehearsed, there was or seemed to be a blur in her mind like I've felt before, is it booze, it troubled me. Do you know what I mean. She said I looked happier than she'd seen before and got me to tell what I'm holding in my middle (that I'm more like I was). I wanted to tell her I loved you and I think she wanted to say that of herself and we both found a way to. It was earlier Anita came and twined in a yellow leotard around the woman I was talking to, who introduced us. I said we'd met, she said she didn't remember. I said "Do you remember Jam." She said, "Oh, yes," (vaguely) "that was when it was." Pause. "You have a very good memory." I said "Thank you," looking critically and although, I was surprised at it's behind-the-time, my heart darkened, I knew she's not my Kore or yours either. On the dance floor turning through the crowd seeing faces looking into mine smiling, oh extraordinary, shy, and the girl pointing her feet in a jig. When I came in there seemed so many men, I didn't want to see, then when it was dancing it was women's bodies all around. A thick little body dancing expertly my country people's way, with a thicker little woman in her arms. On the bus a girl tells me her story. Loving and telling you throughout, 2AM, and who's brought your letter to put under the door. In the happiness of working I love you firmly. March 2 I have to do all the repacking myself. Shout at Judy in the front seat "Get out if you won't help, I mean it, I'm murderous." A lot of it and I want to drive the last part of the way home. Which of these objects do I need, pillows in case I have guests, this old dress for pillowcase. Classical Joint. Back in the corner waiting to be more visible, on my heels, satisfied with the look of my head and holding it up - Jeune Vie I'm waiting for you - watching to see who'll see it. Some do, who I disregard, a kept girl and a patriarch. What's patriarch. Small eyes, holds his position. What I do with his look is sweep across it like putting a line through him, look is sweep across it like pulling a line through him. The kept girl: because lipstick and the look of the boy she's with. Happy, having a relation with it, feeling myself moving in detail in the room, the frankness of what faces can do, yes, no, at the door under a light a Jewish boy in wirerims talking and smiling. He stays in that position, I can graze quite close to the shape and light of his face. Musicians, drummer in a teeshirt, muscles in his arms seem to come from making music. He's a big wet boy, closes his eyes at the mic making ironies with his mouth, he's a beautiful spectacle of body in music. Trombone harmonica. His jaw's developed like a limb and is sexy. At the door in an army jacket like mine, him, the roux, the little mime. He was right, he would see me. The way I've been saying hello, a little wipe with the palm, when I look at it, it seems to be related to the size of them across the room, does it brush over them. (From them: a small hand brings them in toward, and stops them at, a smile that knows them.) His orange sweater, it's the color he is. Now there's something a little too close, monitoring for interest, his comfort and discomfort. I feel his admiration between me and the further side of the room, where there's a woman I'm liking to look at: his intimacy, but then too when I look at him directly I have a shock seeing how his features fill his face with him. I'm watching for exaggeration, but give in to the look of his head. His hands are wide in the palm, short and thick in the fingers, I think stupid. He makes room so I enjoy myself. But when I'm away in the lacy fiddle he says perhaps he takes too much of my space talking about his deep things. "No?" Left handed. The woman's a fine cut, but she's moving exactly and not cautiously, texture of hair and skin, she's tightly crystallized, pink and bright in her face, the fine light down her throat. In the last hoedown I'm clapping every beat, he begins after me, when it's got so fast I'm clowning the labour of my arm muscles I suddenly see her, beyond him, gleaming at me above - I'm seeing this now - more than two hands. I meant, I was delighted to see her smile at me. In this time feel Richardson and other Februaries. Marion's pictures [Bancroft probably]. How to put stills in movies. Marion's way of carrying the camera to show things on the horizontal. A way of speaking with an image so the image changes axis. The white or black images where something comes out. Changing the eyes. How else. John Muir's study build into the mill in the Sierras, wet ladder, notes and drawings. Circle Lo: "There are other ways of making space." Feeling I missed him, or as if he's near? And I know why, he's the missing father. Go to HK with a portfolio. Whether a child made by confluence of people who are never together again, would feel a division even more than - because of the skill it takes to make a portrait of a horse. Orchid. [I buy a white phalenopsis]
My pictures this afternoon were wonderful, especially the big sky with J. Yesterday late afternoon when I'd written the soulfuck was in bed touching myself as if I were a woman's body, beautiful right breast (but the rough skin over the breastbone and on the bum), bring myself to the orchid orchid but then am afraid to sleep as if I'm guilty of wasted time. "Nothing exists before it has been uttered in a clear voice." Not true but why -
Cleopatra VII, the only known Cleopatra The distant inhabitants of the black land wished to know, to open the last door of the last divine dwelling at the heart of the interior sun, and to see. To the most unusual degree he seemed to feel that his had been a glorious life. To get these great works of god into yourself - that's the great thing. John Muir not sad, living in the study of a dying house, wanting to renovate it for the next inhabitant, didn't have time to write the memoirs of his travels. Here they settled and prepared to enjoy the phantasmagoria. Coming downstairs in the library held back by two men, one complaining to the other in business Cockney "She told me to fuck off, / / / / and she is a professional" - hears me listening - stops, steps back, "Can we just let this ..." - "Professional" I say stepping through - "... this guy pass." Liu The travels of Lao Ts'an in thick weather or on dark nights the hours of the compass Tides flow one under the other for a period measured in fractions of a tide. and to the ende that those men which were the paynefull and personall travellers Peregrinations historia is that which must bring us to the certayne and full discoverie of the world. a natural, followed by children [letter]
This living in a hotel is exactly right. - Something of being maddened or bled by your theories that figure out so things are held in place by braces. What you said about my birthday. I like very much hearing what you tell about Bernice and Helmer, Jesse, Mrs Stickney, going to Grande Prairie and all your daily life. - I've put up a picture of child Mozart. His beautiful face makes me think of you. when I'm working I know why I'm away from you, and now when I've worked I'm thinking of seeing the Rembrandt at the top of your Guilford stairs with you. I like your capacities so much I don't know why I imagine freedom is without you, except that work, to feel like it is, needs to be alone in the backroom. Has your friend focus come. - I don't know about you. If you're mad at me for adventuring here don't think you need to be. I wish you'd tell your days. Are you less solitary. What was it about how you were when you called and are you still like that. Did you get the happy letter. I feel kept away from you as if you're angry. And am, too, 'you don't like me.' I think that's because I haven't had a friendly letter since - I think ii'll have to be treeplanting in May, maybe April, dread it.
Happy when I work, the larger sense of how to move comes close enough so
I remember it, but a lot of empty hours. Some meetings. 4 When I make a little probe, usually I think it first in the we. Then I make a deliberate pull into the capsule: where I'm all there is. "I make no hypotheses." Sense of handwriting charming pictures Sense in thinking (about how Stephanie looks, last instance) of keeping suspended as if in the air on either side, the principles of decision; implicit a picture of those transparent lines. What's seen is not a figure but a few lines and the sense of figure. - Find out something about transparent outline. A chord at night: beautiful: it's a train. Following my companion through a marsh. We're wading in mud and reeds to a house on the other side, she says, not there (left front), it's too deep, uncertain, no one goes there. We're at the small house, we veered right, someone's unlocking a weathered garage door or house door. The old people who live there. Telling my companion I'm responsible for the girl, I'm carrying a bundle to store for her, in it my Beaulieu (image not name) ("camera"). She's not my daughter, the responsibility is from my own necessity. Traveling, car slows for corner, an open trunk, black boxes, shall I get into it, maybe they're going to Lilloett? Lillian? It would be a cold long ride. In what I don't recall a lightness, travel, sadness? But a lightness of presence I think I know from other dreams - once, an American house, near San Francisco maybe, where an artist woman lived with many children. I was briefly visiting in an afternoon? Large tree outside. Walked through some of the rooms. [meeting Roy Kiyooka at an opening in his gallery on Powell] And how was it: the pictures. He's not seen, he's importanced, then peered at heavily. What's he doing what'm I doing. Success being heavily watched. What can we make. Entêtement. (I know there are light people but I insist on putting out this heavy one, difficultly slowly because I want to try out the way I am alone.) Hello as looking - take it to embarrassment, the embarrassment's at the sense of freeze real strangeness. Can ask a good question then get to be alone, I'll oblige, would like to make what you've asked for. I think I'm carefully telling also working to know from what you say, whether you can understand that language. Shame, as with them, listening to self preoccupation, that can't imagine how to work them in the same way and doesn't want to and I'm knowing the way I'm being seen is as selfpreoccupied and so inept. Something I don't know about what it is. You: you've got what you wanted, new friends, old man but you got in with the 'old' women and how is it, why've you got that big picture where your cock can mesmerize, have you subverted the women's women and what am I doing. About to tell you that vision, halt and your eyes going sideways say halt but I insist. Not suitable. Don't care, going to try, silence, labour it out, insisting more, I want you to see it. "What you're saying is you don't, ..." making connections between. "That's the opposite of what I mean. It was like seeing a lot of sunlight out there." "When I worked in the fisheries ." "How long ago was that?" "Oh Ellie that was 40 years ago, 35." Same as my father's resistance when I wanted to read Dineson. Is it a grandiosity they know the signs of and don't tolerate. But I've given up my prettiness to be allowed to be grander. Dale spells out that she won't challenge any grandness. [Dale's ultraviolet photos in the show] "Oh do you ever think your eyes have extended their spectrum and you can see ultraviolet." Flashes, "Yes, but I don't tell many people that." To not using meters. "Yes I sometimes think it's mediumistic." "Materializing." The heaviness is the working on a picture, 'exploitive', interrogate whoever will allow it, for confirmations, being sure to know how it works. "Did you get the sense of a developing compactness and significance to everything that was happening, I don't know if you know what I mean." I was across the room and that time it came out was if I didn't say it and was better, and he said "Yes I know what you mean." Oh leaps but not leaps to be seen to be leaping. Thinking of the scale as horizontal not down, but it would have to be all around. Scaling between, fining, would want to say in but that's meant for behind the body. Picture of an edge thinning out. On his lap in his loving arm, his large hand on her little white pants. When she's older she stands in front of him showing him her new breasts. When she's older she makes him slip. - Formality, who's willing and who isn't, the mirror surfaces of R's eyes, turn away, T's pleased but yellow, see the grey teeth in the backs of mouths, C's in a vise disapproving, holding the standard, I can hear the pleasantry too, but go out for the relief of being able to, table behind the girl's brightness these seem dark, you're not well what're you suffering of. When we were taping, embarrassment, holding onto slowness, the beauty that came into the room, windows. [Trudy was taping a series of portraits of her friends] Breaking down a gesture. The stiffness insided and showed but from the outside something else makes me less visible than I felt. Roof threw up water edges onto side of wall that movement stretched colors separated a front and back moving different direct, rotations. Screens black paper. [letter] March 7 Don't think Sandy is mad at you, at the party last night she held the table, T and R cracking up by her, R long hair black baseball sneakers very pretty. I didn't want to be there. C's looking unloved. Diana shone and said little. Daphne met Sandy for the first time, they enjoyed talking about the Liberals in the West. Stephanie came in drunk and was loved by all You were awful on the phone, your voice miniscule colonial miserable and angry. It wasn't the day for you to phone. My birthday is nothing to do with you never was. And of course I'm here to spend my birthday with T, it acknowledges something she was willing to do for me. She heard a story with her feelings. We spent some hours in chit chat patiently and then made a videotape that was silly and fine. C was offended.
The little girl Esther, but she isn't my daughter, I have a child, who's ----? Luke is my son, Luke, where's he, go find him, sit with him. Roy's in the front seat, there's a woman next to him, high fashion, I'm surprised seeing she's leaning on his shoulder, he turns his head saying "You won't mention the Mozart," meaning to Sara. I pretend I don't know what he means. When she steps out of the car her high-heeled black and silver shoe on the muddy grass, black satin pant leg with a silver stripe. (Their religion is a conversion, but to something that's rumored to want to go straight to the afterlife. I say "Do you mean suicide?" "Yuh.") The car has begun to roll, I'm the only one in it, shout out, but decide to rely on myself, drive over the back seat, hand on the right pedal, is it brake, yes, stops in the edge of a wheel mark, some man is on his heels checking it, sez it will hold, I release. [clipping:
The gospel according to Thomas -
March 9 Their two bodies holding all eyes as they say whatever the social machine can produce. How else could it be. Reading from a sentence to the body of their machine. I'm mesmerized among bodies. Sandy whose face and body I don't want to see, she's looking to show she sees what I see, the company, but does she. Could I imagine you there. You'd be showing you could do it with them. Maggie the hunched crackling with the star girls. This is not for me, why'm I here. In one silence, the way we were settled in the room was beautiful. Why, to see all of them with each other, so, alone with any, I'll know my place. There'll be a time when I never see any of them again. I am not part, don't have to make a place. D shines. C. Little body caught me, dancing with a beer in her hand, who did she see dancing like that. Keeping herself away, she's lonely for Trudy who's there with Rhoda, who's learning to be more like Trudy, clown. What could they do instead. Daph what are you on the margin. What's that look I don't like, you're the right shape to succeed here. The young girls're still there comparing bodies and praising the winners. What's the laughing. In what way could I like it. If we'd been all day building something I liked I'd be willing to. T C R D D S S J E I M. [Trudy, Cheryl, Rhoda, Diana, Daphne, Sandy, ?, Judith, me, Ingrid, Martha?] My silence and slow speech and writing. Don't remember names and facts. Have gone to vision again and wonder - It's a freeze but is it working. (You'd thaw it.) The sometimes exquisite music of the trains. That I've come to the end of books and have to study harder, have to begin with necessity. It needs to have a relation to another kind of people. There's no home. Making the body one. When I said a complex, I saw it built out to his right, my left / or toward the west wall, and the picture was of going through a circuit rather than looking and seeing.
- The projector. Hand projector. He walks between meetings, is usually alone in an open landscape. The intimacy of his vision of bushes and road. The comfortable stillness of the distant point. This is the summer tour. (Rafferty.) He has in his hand an instrument like a sliding telescope. It's a microchip image-gatherer, takes microscopic and wide-angle, anything he likes, songs, a light but beautiful instrument he edits by brainwave. It's no good to extract beauties, they have to learn to see how they can see. When composing he has to stop. Can look on the surface, use the lens to rerun what he's gathered thinking. At night by his fire, in his long cloak, makes more decisions, tries and varies. And then in the gatherings holds it in his hand, shines it on wall/card/object in such a way that he shows something to enliven/clear. They don't know how to thank him, but give what they have out of their customary generosity. At times he can link himself to someone and project for them, or what they need. [letter] Sunday, raining. Vegetable chop suey downstairs in the Europe restaurant, most delicious meal there could be. The mushrooms. Upstairs in that big room, ships in the blue, chords from trains. What if my movie is cantos. Still want to put everything in. Thinking of the order of the service. Down to the rice. Diana's party still assembled when I left at 3. Your Rhoda's blooming comic like Trudy. I think her happiness is from having had a reading. Diana quite shining. Sandy and Renee full of successful lines. They're solicitous of me as if I'm related by marriage! They mean it for you. Very drunk and stoned party. I wouldn't. Thought how you'd be there, you'd show you could do it with the best. Maggie was in the midst, she's in, and likes it. Rose Red danced, said nothing, called me with her body. I didn't like the playing, cackle, but there was a brief silence when we were all there in places around the kitchen, eleven, that was beautiful. Don't think it's a school now, seems to have done that to expand and seems to have got enough. Chitchat hurt, you wanted a miracle, it wasn't one, but your contempt of the way I was trying, slowly, which I am, to feel you under the this and that. You didn't have a clue either. It's alright. We're not each other's home but we have built houses quite near even if in different countries. You're glad to be alone but you're angry I went and don't want to come home. You don't know that me too I'm being stoical. I want to blame you for your confusions and me for mine, that there's no home because of them. Tonight I'm cranky, how last week when I was high you were my distant house. 10 Fighting with J about the house. Send her instructions about the garden, beans all along the front. Talk about when to plant. Come up the alley see a woman coming out of our basement carrying a large trunk. It's Jam's. I challenge her, she with an instruction from her friend (this in England?), says she lives in the house, in a Scots accent. She's red-haired, well put together in middleclass middleage clothes. House feels like it might be Guilford. I see c/o Epp written in chalk on the side of the trunk, shout to the people on the steps above (2 floors) "Call the police, this is a robbery, call the police, there's a robber." She's surrounded and doesn't struggle, on the floor upstairs speaks Cockney. Jam's there. The woman, across the room, is pantomiming a kiss along her point finger in a black glove, is it to get to J. I have a sense of a strong ironic desperate superintelligence, she's fighting in levels, she's in personalities as in war. I know she's my better and wonder if I'll contrive a way to let her go, if that's what she's working for. Waking I'm still thinking about her, she interested me more than anyone I've met since T and C. - What don't you like. - I feel the failures, know it's there to keep it going, careless, young: thinking their talk so mindless never say so because I'm smarter and must protect them from my contempt, or else it's dazzling and I know I can't do that, or I have to hide that there are people I can't look at or long to look at or long to touch. Held back.
[undated letter] Been wanting to hear literal translations from Chinese, subtitle movie Hastings so much like how sense make many translate Chinese poem all bad. Want know how lean canbe talk. You give please. HD afraid not of Orion but of Sagittarius. "I feared Archer." Mentions invoking Orion. Where we may greet individually, / Sirius, Vega, Arcturus, / where these separate entities / are intimately concerned with us, / where each, with its particular attribute, / may be invoked / with accurate charm, spell, prayer, / which will reveal unquestionably, / whatever healing or inspirational essence / is necessary for whatever particular ill Sound from bells, she says, comes down from towers (Venice-Venus) like gold pollen shaken.
Tonight you could visit. We could get under the orange covers, turn off the light, click, turn on the Bach, from the pillows see (out) the windows. North Vancouver lights. Maybe I'll be able to tell you the story of the bulb bought in a magic stall in Morocco. Yeah maybe I'll write it. When you finish your thesis you must dedicate it to Sandy. Baked fish: the liveness of food words when I'm hungry. A delicious picture: baked fish. Hello sealskin. Is your skin brown in the dark: yes it reflects. At the small of the back. Oh maybe in the morning you'll be happy and not remember not to be beautiful. Hair slide under hand. This is hard for you. Shoulder do you know I love you. (Don't let her know.) Knob and arm. This upper arm has some love for me, don't let it know. Flank and thigh are allowed, but does she wonder why I stay there. Very sweetly full skin. Reflects. Scared mouth, be careful, don't be too big for her, she's going to hurry me away, oh it's the sadness that won't go, it's the only scared is going to turn it on me, sad but yes, if it's the only when she's busy I can touch her undercover oh its beautiful shape don't scare her if I go in will she startle somewhere careful careful does she hate it is she ignoring it her beautiful glue the white and brown/blue small I can't make it right and she's lost me [letter to my mom] Monday 10th Hello M, not much to say, thank you for R's letter, it was a little too thick to be taken quite straightforward, it worried me, he seemed too religious and ingratiating than I can believe of him: it may mean they are planning to move on with trying to adopt. It does as you said speak for itself but says more than you, liking to believe people, heard. I always like to see your handwriting, it's pretty and wellformed. Was pleased to have the picture of your visit with J, wd've liked more. She phoned on my birthday, seemed mizruble. I spent most of the day with my twin (Trudy, you met her), we seem to be drawn to do that. Day before, I took a long busride to an opener part of the city, south of the centre, where the farms begin, to buy an orchid. Six large whitewashed greenhouses, warm and damp: pushed through aisles of corsage-machines, but bought a small phalaenopsis plant, moth orchid, three not-large leaves and a very long stalk, with four flowers and a bud, they are like white moths), wonderful forms, petals almost flat, looking into them I can see pale grey veining and a dense crystal structure like marble. The flowers are almost identical, each with a red inner flower. They way they stand on the stalk, so precisely overlapped, shoulder to shoulder, is quite touching. I took a long time choosing the best one, the man liked me for having been so careful and when I said it was my birthday, he said Wait a minute, and put four corsage orchids into the cardboard box with my plant. We went back to the bus stop in a very bright cold wind, I found myself feeling motherly toward my moth flowers, who'd never been out before, hugged them, so they'd be near the warmth coming off my body. I was in love with them, like that walking doll I got at Christmas when I was ? 9. Funny interruption just here, a man from down the hall, he said he wanted advice, could he come in, he wanted to know should he give up his hairpiece, took it off, looked ten years older, but better. I said yes, burn it, better not to have the young girls than to go round with a sad secret. Am in a hotel room for the rest of the month, maybe April too. An old hotel, marble staircase, my room has big windows toward the blue harbour, trains make fine music, today there's the sound of tires through rain. I'm working, so slowly trying to put everything together, intuition knows things but another part isn't satisfied unless it checks and references, confirms. Oh I'd love a passionate energy but it's not here today. Worried about Luke, but don't know if I could take care of him right, if I got him back. I take on such difficult syntheses. It seemed strange to me you didn't visit Jam more, she'd be a source for you, I thought, and you for her too. Does she make you nervous like I do? I wdn't think so. I'm sorry you're leaving that house. Are you going to be shifted away from your friends and connections. Are you going to allow yourself to be? Dreamed last night we, you, I, and Jam, were consulting about when to plant the garden (ours). One day I thought about how I would describe my essential sense of you, from all the time I've known you: "What do I know in Mary, as cloud: a dark and curious, young." 11 From working in JV's, happiness to find that I knew what had been there as unknown from first reading. If it's transitions that make it false. Transition makes false, write Chinese. Then the water was silver. Now Bach. (Reach round her like that, under the blanket, twining arm.) And from HD being able to tell her how it is sad. Writing - why didn't I? 12 Sleeping in the depot, station, right to life clinic, on a mattress and under a dirty light blue quilt I'd brought, comfortable. There's a body on the right, has head under a blanket (never see this person), waking feeling success in traveling, home anywhere. People pass, from my bed I'm looking at them, enjoying, some of them see and understand. There begin to be many travelers. It's more like a barn I'm in. The man who comes to speak to me, and his wife behind, is a farmer. Do I speak French. But we're speaking German too, coast of Belgium. I can't cross to Paris today (I'll only be able to say I went to Belgium), there's a storm on the sea. While we talked the other must have left. He's telling, I'm understanding as if I have a picture, green choppy windy. Says he can stay in his house tonight, as we walk toward it. I remember from my present actual memory the sense of a stranger welcomed, but walk along the beach to see whether it really is a beach, whether ferries leave or don't. The country has a certain feeling, maybe Denmark, like some of the spruce groves with houses there are in my country. Narrow beach. A line of cut wood, look up to see the house it belongs to, new empty summer house, dark glass, water margin curving west-south, dark day. May be able to see mainland. When I'm turning back see the water come up over the sand, like a glass shell, sand, then the moving depth of water on it - the thing, substance - and again, with an alive over, in that dark daylight. Hostel? Take the elevator upstairs to speak to someone in the right to life clinic. Two women behind desks, I don't like the looks of. I have a friend who's pregnant, it was someone downstairs, no help with these dead women. As I'm in the elevator and the door's closing, a young pregnant nurse, loose blue stripe dress and white cap, passes. I thinking nursing students who get pregnant must stay in school and work here. In the garden - it's north of the house, the strip between new and old house - many little plants, some of them next to snow. Go round the side. Diana at the window. More plants there. East. We walk together looking. "There's your broccoli." Sowed last fall. A fat baby sitting on the end of the row. I remove him (think I could always find beautiful houses, this one red and white on the outside, low, speaking a wide southern sun porch with firewood) and follow his mother to plunk him back to her. She's around a corner (Ev Jansen?, someone from that church, young married). Confiding to someone, maybe my mother, crying, "--- hasn't telephoned me in such a long time." I come around, shout "Roy hasn't telephoned you?" and pelt her with what's in my hand. She's shocked but sees it's very small white flowers. Says "It's flowers." Leave the baby with her thinking it isn't nice to, and am on the snowy mountain. Do I fall, slide, go a long way down. What's supposed to happen is that my companion will chant "I'm here I'm here" to show what point to head back to. I hear it and see a small figure on a peaked place above me. I call too.
In open grassland pasture, dead body on the back (The long man "Hey madame I didn't mean that soup is ready now, it'll be ready about 5 o'clock." "Try me then, I might be hungry." Blue-eyed smile) in daylight, set lit candles into the ground around it, randomly. Friends or others could come and sit at a little distance. In winter lay the body, in indoor clothes, on the snow. From the house, watch snow falling on it and among the candles. Candles rather than flowers. Candles would be growing there. The darkness of a snowing daylight, candles spit. The dead face peacefully receiving snow. The setting face-to-face with the clear light like the void and cloudless sky know yourself and abide in that state that which is called death being come to you now
Am I dead or am I not dead? It cannot determine. "I was lyin' to yuh, I need two seventy-five." In a pouting face: "Can yuh lend me that deuce?" 13
[letter] Friday 14 Bach mass. The soprano is to be Ingrid Suderman. When I was 16-17 I watched her from the church loft. I could see she was vain by the way she exaggerated her mouth when she sang, but I hung onto her face for its passion. I watched her sing with my mouth open. Pretty blackhaired girl. She was a few years older, we never met in that large congregation. Her family lived on a farm further up Clearbrook Road, my grandfather knew her father. These years in Vancouver I'd sometimes see her name on posters, cantatas and chamber music. I thought maybe she wasn't married, maybe she liked women, I'd meet her one day and she'd like me because I'd known what she was long ago. She'd have an apartment in the West End, we'd love each other, I'd go to concerts and look at her in an evening dress singing the way I would if I could. I was late, they were just closing the main doors, it was going to be $5 not 2: I sneaked upstairs to the organ loft, small space, students having to stand up to see. Like the loft in Clearbrook, 'balcony,' but I couldn't see as well. The soprano in a maroon dress, duet with a contralto from the chorus. She's singing well but the contralto is pushing into it more. I can't see her face. She's taller than I thought. After a while another singer, was I wrong? with dark hair. This one's making opera of it. Well it is the Misere. Dark heavy voice. Her passion could have gone that way, theatrical. When it's the intermission I go boldly through the performer's door. Black suit musicians standing against the walls of a corridor. The tall maroon chiffon walking fast directly ahead of mme. I follow her into the backstage room, plywood and metal folding chairs. She has turned and is looking at me. I instantly read a matron, meat under her jaw, tight mouth, stage rouge. I don't know whether her eyes leave too. Mine flash away to the mirror wall I felt on my right, see the last of maroon crossing out of sight behind me. I'm standing staring at the rest of the musicians in the mirror, the tenor you like, that we see at all these things, sees me looking. I leave and find a place on the right of the orchestra. Long intermission. A beautiful woman in the front row of the centre hall. Pink English intelligent face big nose humour blue eyes grey straight hair. Rosy, worn, warm. She doesn't turn when I look at her. Is that her daughter. When the musicians come out I'm shocked to realize the soloists are going to sit on the bench that runs sideways to mine. Ingrid sits with her back just next to me, I can see the split ends in the short hairsprayed hair, and the hairline's plunge on either side of the neck vertebrae. It's Phyllis Mailing next to her, then the tenor. When the two women speak I see two rouged opaque cheeks turning toward each other. The tenor is shining in his own porky skin, singing along with the chorus, swaying, damp. I find myself sad and after being sad for a while realize we're in a sad movement of the mass. My eyes browsing in the audience suddenly, when I'm on the way back to the singers, discover the English woman has been looking a very definite long look at me. I don't stay but when my eyes have passed and I feel hers still there I break into a smile I wouldn't have dared give her straight. And I'm blushing. Music is getting happier, I'm ready to look at the chorus. Or are they just now letting go. There's a very thin older woman ecstatic, in love. They're all transformed bodies. The animals. [letter] 15 I'm in a hotel room taking pins out of a new shirt. Put them on the window sill. Paul comes in. I don't want to see him. You arrive, you live there too, you're angry. I go right to you. Are you angry Paul's there. We go on fighting getting friendlier. You say you don't like how my face has been fat and hard-featured for a long time. That's when I put my arms around you from behind and say I've seen Joyce twice and haven't told you yet. Actually once. We're in a field. I pick up some long dead branches, say we'll haul them over there for the bed. Or you'll drive, I'll walk across to the campsite, and we'll use them for firewood. [session with Joyce Frazee] I taped us, thought I could betray myself better if I wasn't keeping the account too. It's complicated. She often misunderstands me but comes up with a description out of that misunderstanding, that reminds me of something I've thought before. The procedure makes me lie in a way that seems inefficient. But shaking the pillow did me good. A lighter voice after. Maybe bodywork. She didn't seem alert. Went back to her formulae when something else obvious even to me by the eruption in the laugh had come out. She may not be well, she's thin. My cold was gone but has come back. She seemed to tell me she thinks I'm incurable. 15 In car on the road at the corner of the east place driveway. I'm backing up fast and smooth, eyes through side window to the verge, not looking back. Many small boys throwing stones at me but I know I can outdistance them and then I have the water turned on, a big rush from the corner, wash them away. Back there to the cement, a small square lid in the cement not quite closed. I look inside for the cheque and account, my father's thousand dollars not there, must have been washed away, I remember it was cashed but can I remember how I spent it. There was a nine hundred something (Canada Council nine thousand something). By armspan 5-8 1/2 Surge at the Rothenberg - Diana, Josie, Daphne. Own voice chanting 4 on tape, big speakers, one at the mic, lean close or out. "But I do give you a lot of notice Diana." 16 In a (department) store I try a white nightgown over my white teeshirt, together they look like a long fitted gown which flatters me. I realize that Greg and Don are coming back through the store - will catch me in - I see myself a single flurried look in the mirror - wedding dress and a veil and my face under some curly hair looking very pretty. My mother looks along my back and is impressed with my figure in the dress. The radiance is the father, the voidness perceiving it the mother, etc. The intellect itself, unobstructed, shining, thrilling and blissful. Liable to pass into miserable states owing to breach of vows or failure to perform essential obligations honestly. Subtle, sparkling, bright, dazzling, glorious, and radiantly awesome, in appearance like a mirage moving across the landscape in springtime in one continuous stream of vibrations. That is the radiance of your own nature, recognize it. In the midst, the natural sound, a thousand thunders simultaneously. Without a flesh body whatever comes, sounds, lights, or rays, can't hurt you. You can't die.
one note of an orchestra at night bigger / black [sketch] close-up In Hildegard's the sandy metal, sand falling pouring grains but singly. 17 Greg at the east place. I realize I should host him, and want to, but am doing it badly, forgetful. Bring one cup of water to the coffeepot, half fills it, but I should've taken pot to tap. Blueberries from the cupboard, big plastic sack. Why've they taken all of it out of the freezer. Cranberries. Clear plastic bags, few berries, much red fluid. M has covered the fish sticks, still cooking in their pan, with something in a plastic bag, to keep them hot. (Wouldn't plastic melt.) We're in the orange evening light, Greg sitting on the grass in front. I go to him, say "Do you like this place," meaning, I'm sure you like this place. He says yes in a way that means he doesn't think so. I go back through the trees to the west slope, look at the trees in that light, large white trunks. I see some of them. Usual wonder if bull but not far through the trees. Looking down a long way on green land divided in small fields. There's a pattern in the front line of large house sites, green rectangles, and near each of them a smaller site. Walk back, meet Judy, go to embrace her, can't go forward. I have a large bushy wreath of what're like bay leaves around my neck. Thinking to tell Don I saw Indra at UBC today, but did I or did I think it, I know I only thought it. Don't be fond of the dull white light May the divine mother of infinite space be my rearguard. May I be led safely across the fearful ambush of the uncertainty. (Central realm of the densely packed.) East brilliant white mirror-like Put your faith in the brilliance not the fondness you have for the dull smoke-colored (violent anger). South primal form of the element earth, as a yellow light. Dull bluish yellow of human egotism. West red light primal of fire, and the light path from miserliness covetousness dull red. Come to receive one. North green light of the primal form of element air. Dull green from jealousy, if you're attracted to it miseries of quarrelling and warfare. Trust in the dazzling green radiance Abide in the moon of non-thought formation. Traveler. Strong girl, or boy? Sores on a good face, a tall girl, who when I'm studying the look of eruption on her cheek, turns and looks, strong eyes. One speaking to social worker is boy. I'm in line. When I look at him sitting down along the wall I'm surprised, he's challenged me. Oh I can do that. He's letting and making me look, but he's so young, why me. A fine face with strong eyes, pretty, but intelligent and forward. The sense of a bent blade spring, the tension of holding the eyes. I go to watch, know I can go on. His mouth starts to smile, he's conceding. I smile too but he doesn't smile more. There's a man coming who's going to break the line. Just before the body comes between us he blinks, I look away under cover, and then am at the desk, but have a minute when I hide. Whose mother is 36 and goes through 3 diaries in a month. Marie-Claire Blais smile. [He says] "I have a friend who is sleeping now. There aren't many people who can read my book. My friend reads in it, I leave it on the table. He writes in it too."
[letter] Sound. Letter pushed under the door. Oh! Yes what I need to get up. It's thin. Small unhappy writing. Ma-ry ballad. A false creek. (Yesterday read the
name many times, was told someone was living there.) Mailed when. I saw
March 21. No that hasn't been yet. 12 at the hostel. Take
the elevators upstairs to speak to someone in the right to life clinic.
Two women behind desks I don't like the looks of. I have a friend who's
pregnant, someone downstairs, no help with these dead women. As I'm in the
elevator and the door's closing, a young pregnant nurse, loose blue stripe
dress and white cap, passes with trolley - I think nursing students who
get pregnant must stay in school and work here. 18 We've packed (the fruit, babies) to leave the park. My mother and I are in a room talking about Richardson. I say "The one you couldn't read." She says but she got it from the library after that. I had just said "And what did you think of it?" when Father came in raging. We'd been talking and forgotten to leave. I shout at him to leave her alone. He goes away to get a weapon. I organize the defense. My mother upstairs. There's a fire escape, Uncle Willy has got a club of some kind. Cut to Father, I think, taking up a crowbar. I have a hammer and when he's nearly there (he had to come from the end of a long driveway) I take off my nylons to have a good grip on the floor. He comes in fast, no one stops him, it's just me. I go at him. Going to get rid of him this time, liberate her, seem to be hitting him below the belt. Fade. Coming to, sitting at a table asking if she's dead; no, he, someone indicates her at the head of the table. And him too, at her right hand but around the corner of the table, pale. He looks like his young self but very weak. T forgot the piece of two looking at each other and is doing it again. 19 Waking and falling asleep: something about messenger, a screen mesh in a shape as if put over the mouth of a bottle? In front of me a man whose desk is full of crumpled papers. I think he's the man I saw on the street (whose briefcase was open and tied with a string, stuffed with sheets of paper with writing on them) and I think he must be a poet. Across the aisle is a more coherent man I think may be a known writer. He says would they make a room that was mirrors on all sides. The sensation of directly being able to talk. I say of course they could, wondering if he meant something else, mirrors with no pores, a light tight - I picture myself in a completely mirrored bathroom, I think he does too, have the sense we're seeing the same thing, picture of ourself suspended in all the directions. a lot of controlled energy With Paul in front of a photograph. He says there's something there that isn't what it seems. "What is it?" "It doesn't matter what it is." "Yes it does matter, I have to find out." "You risk losing it." "That doesn't matter." Late sleep discussion, if I do anything I should go deep into it and not do it so habitually, ie magnifying drug. A work tithe. 20 Hello my bed. She said Uncle Peter died. Heart attack? No, on the highway, where he often was, business. Josie. Curiosity. It embarrasses me. "I've been absorbing things twice as fast as I could last year, because I made myself." The fascinating hairline. "People talk to me." Looking into the texture of the face, pores, rednesses, the fuzz in a sidelight, as if into a vivid light, marveling quite close, and the clear eyes. White spot on a tooth. The zigzag pants and body in them letting itself be seen, bum, I've never seen her in that shape. Arms around her waist, I hold her so my hands will be able to feel the smallness of the ribs, in a sweater, oh, supple and warm. She earned all the news fast. And tears. "And so I thought I'll just kiss ass a little bit and see if I can get a grant for the summer, and they gave it to me." "When I moved into that house I was like a baby, I couldn't have any complexity, I'd been so crazy, everything had been so complex," making layers with her hand. Her hand. Artists' hands. Prickle tear for the feeling of distributing images in my country. And when she was disowning the one we'd been in our house. My friends' small bodies. Heard my voice lowering. 21 A man whose photographs of cows, dye transfer prints. Wrote Roy. Driving alongside the Indians' camp houses, loaves of straw, camp clearly ditched. Wood barrels, tools stacked at this end. I'm with ? my father, ---, ---. I'm thinking I could make houses, mud and straw, live for free. Inside, objects, light on them in dark of small room, small windows. The look of a man passing the open door. Makes me think it may be his house. Darker. On the right, west, night sky, open. We're still in the house I think, I see a planet, small, near the horizon. Is it a meeting of a small moon and ringed Jupiter. The two yellow craft in that distance. The planet, moon, is growing. There's never been a planet so close to earth. The markings on its face. Moon. Looking in its face calmly, knowing its course is collision and soon. Black, in it the earth is shocked, sense of the confusion in the air when its inertial turning is banged. Currents, flame. In my knowledge of survival, on the dark ground, I'm thinking of the implications, it will be in changed orbit and spin. Writing this dream, joy. In the large light bottom room of a building. I'm going to light the fuse of the atom bomb. The man who's instructing me is going to tell me when. Delays, hesitations. After a while I see the flame has caught on the (frayed end of rope) fuse and it's done. Shout and run, to behind the house. Bang, smoke, watch to see how it comes by the edge of the house, what shape it takes. The particles swirling into the house's shadow area will be radioactive. Afterward my instructors are denying they know or did anything. I'm going to be framed and in trouble but am pleased with having been the one to light the bomb. Seems worth it. At Daroka's, café society. Diana: "And there was something else he did, to raise the mask, some little movement of his shoulder." "What happened then?" Quick turn and smile, a sense of understanding, swift, from where, the solar? What was understood, was it the same thing? It saw the shoulder and the flaps going up. The difficulty of Hilde, and Rhoda watching it, sponsorship, and you, Grey Eyes, are you remembering, calculating or something else. I'm busy, but I don't mind that you see. In the suffering of Hilde's long explanation what is that being pinned back. She's sitting in defense, in what way is she being attacked. C's contempt, my imposition of you on who may not want. Renee looking as if she's been offended, a blond? Being in movement, aware, betraying myself, is that what Joyce means, the moments between? That there's no special relationship. It's going to be an even chance among. 23 Fighting with Diana saying as if what she wanted: crying because of the sharp one, to see that what she says she wants, if I give it, means my death in her presence. Alright old woman you can have it, but will you like it. You're cranky. Politics and room to move. 24 I walk her to the road, put my arms around her jacket, look back to the house, see T running with cattle, she's shouting and frightened, go back, tell her to separate the big cattle into the barn. Others on the yard helping. Some animals on hind legs. They're packed away under board lids, Gypsy workers, unhappy, kept through the winter in bundles. C with my benevolence commits herself to reviving and educating a woman (who'd been wrapped in purple?), letting her out. Waking thinking last night had saturated my unconsciousness with them, and then to know how they did it. (Working as a team. Booze makes it permeable but not as much as dope.) and then: not how they did it but what was in the air from the first (spring). Her gabble to keep her body in front of our eyes. Falling asleep in happy sensation and images. The garden yesterday. Picking and shaking small grass individuals, leaving the ground pleasant. Looking, carefully, seeing more than last time. A new blue curl. The moss in the forest. When I leaned on the fence the sun's heat seemed to come to me out of the garden, as love. 25 "I have my own fuckin' mind. I think it's a better mind than yours is." Rain. Tight money. Don getting a deuce from me and saying "The truth is I'm in love with you." Furious. "Alright, get out. Come on, get out. I don't have any money." "You've got nearly ten dollars. I saw it over there. You had a fin and a couple of deuces." I pull bills out of my pocket, a five and one two rolled together. Give him the two. Then he says ---. I stand up on some sheets of paper and my journal to be angry. He says "You're standing on your work." I'm not able to read, feel sick in the library, want a letter from - or to have J-V arrive, imagine it at the door: oh it's you, sit on the floor look at her face. Waiting for something personal and loving to come through, it won't now. Krishnamurti's presences, with an acute head pain. Big hand on my head and back. Daph ne told Don on television saying existence is pain. I thought to ask and she didn't want to show but her brightness showed that she'd been looking for what, nearing her, I thought I'd have asked for. "A soskie, a double, you're not a carnie." When I said con he looked forward hard. "What?" Hesitation. Said it another way. He answered "Well I'm not -- -- a hard con." "Yes but you know something about the soft con." "You --- --- know something too. I've seen it in action." 27 Get the detail right and structure will (take care of itself). Fellowship. The way Roy said fleshy more than once. "Usually if I have a contact with a writer I can follow what he's doing." What's changed is a sense of living in unsolved demands that can be solved, but only originally. The style and structure made, visible, when the details have been made. Would like to have work useful / in contact with / all earth and universe. How to know.
Dreams The solitary, maker, wife, Film about writing - from voice and print - imagination - making images internally - seeing - hearing - language - description - structure. Babble and carelessness, truth gladly speaking up from among shamed fun. Slow thought. Clarity, bravery. 29 Projector. Can't find how it works. They brought it. They have brought tapes, moving looking like calculators. I was to show travel slides, the boxes I open are pictures of me. Waking thinking of it as my awkward relation with the image maker. The Black Stallion. Eye and face moving in dark, long large-eyed, bottle face, seahorse gaze: he's done something with that.
30 Library. Diatoms. The way they're lit. My mistake. Coming past the greeter, dark passage already looking and is that her? I'm looking for someone. Her friend's sitting so she sees me first, the shocking face and instant, she's a boy. Hair. Bowtie. Oh her friend's a bun. Sitting down shock and strange, speak so low they say "What?" Face is stiff. I'm in my jail behind it. Now I'll do what I can to welcome the stranger and her unwelcome friend. See what's there instead of what I conceived. Screwed up, imp, laughs, her lip goes up, is the one I called there, I don't like her costume, small ring is a good shape for the hand. The hands are tight and fast, I'm aware all the time that I'm falsely presoftened, by flattery and my empty time, struggle to discount to the right degree, tell some available stories and hear some. Will this be a story. I like that she's a musician but when she plays does she get a shape. Has J-V got a wife, yes, jumps up like a husband to get her card. In the interstices I'm looking carefully. Small teeth. She's harder, was my first shock. A little reporter man costume. Available. Laughs at anything. Gyroscope, up stays, keeps her movement possible. The writing puts another kind of body under her. (Mine?) I'm defeated from the first, because I know I won't get what I want. And then. The lock. Pat Smith is nice to see, Ina tapdancing. Ugly hall and them, no pleasure to see, nobody for me. Sandy and Renee, near hatred, grimaced smile. Know you're there and suffer. Did you see me dance. How do you. Wire, jump. Drink bad whiskey, chomp the delicious ice cubes, will it break me out. Violence from how tight I'm held. Out. Do you know why I'm whipping my jacket. Got you with the end of it, do you know why. "I don't understand this place. I had some bad experiences, was even raped." I'm looking without sympathy, what are you giving off to invite badness. It's your pink cushion invites it from me too. How are they. Close, laugh. Yes they're alright but I want to talk to you. And then do. And the corridor's clear to your face. I'm talking myself. Is it hurting her, but too bad, it's true. Was it after she said "Got down on my knees and turned my back and screamed. Doors flew open all along the corridor. The police came. She moved out an hour before they came. It was from that we met." "I was driving. There was a knife in the ---. I picked it up and held it, I thought, why am I holding this. Then I had an image of an Oriental woman coming at me with a knife, I was holding it to defend myself." "At the same time." "And so you decided you were versions of the same person," as if unheard. The immediate future. "An old man used to run his finger down my back." "Don't you ever do that again," whirling around. "When you did it were you doing it to make a mark." Going down the stairs she's saying "When you give it up it comes to you." Well so you're having a triumph. (In the mirror a face that sends me down timid, angry.) " ... would be ten next fall. No I think he's nine." And on the pile of gyproc sheets in the lobby, tile floor holds, small hexagons, her and her and him and him and him, the dog trained as a killer goes through on a strained leash. A drunk is kicked out the door. The Frenchman makes a deal for an acid tablet out of aluminum wrapper, from reluctant boy sweeping. "Are you petting my coat?" Sits with her knee touching me. There's them waiting for a yellow Mustang and my waiting to see whether there'll be any more, the movement, rough sweeping bleach floorwater, dog barks on marble stairs, siren and this and that. Scattered into it and the sensation of kissing her came as if it were happening, holding her round (that's spellbound) the shoulder, and the part I'm coming to where I'm saying goodbye next to the door, Margaret knows to go first - touch? Arm - arm - more? Uncertainty but getting ready for the next. This one's really to look at, you're not going to, but I am. I like to recall - left arm to her shoulder at the base of the neck, what were the faces, don't know, it was against resistance but I know how to leave a mark too even if it's only for me, Pull, want the head next to head and one hand, but strong, a stroke up the neck, one second to feel head in my hand, small, bone, light hair. End, bye, you don't know anything about me but that was a claim. What I saw, when she had her head down (writing) was a flat thin maturity, I thought her future, writer, woman, wire and humor, instrument, how the mouth's held. Woke at dawn solar radiating from confused time with her. We were quick to bed and then there was looking for Daphne on the Moroccan street, a menstrual rag, seeing that I'd made a connection as they are toward a wish and reaching a strangeness whose quality I'd never imagined. Yes alright. What I did wasn't right, no but it wasn't wrong. Morning not wanting to wake, touching myself, making noises as if there were something. If I tried for it to be her, there was nothing. After a while I was far enough so I could remember how it is when you take me far enough so I know I'm yours for whatever you want. I know she can't do that (but could I). But what brings me is the thought of the long stroke. Unhappily. Is it only they who like stories of exactly how something was. Paul's dream of editing, and trying to pull the moment tight ("through that texture"). When I see him stupid out of obstinacy and think how to say it another way, explaining what I wanted, to be an eagle, skilled, over. On [the cover of] The master of go, eagle over turquoise starred. Feel of the go moves - feel of the reporter's description of go moves, as making a spatial logic, invention of spatial logic, for anyone. "By that funny little man over there." Daphne's angry but acting on. Turning syntax. - [illegible, looks like dream account written in the dark] Two silhouettes on the shade / I couldn't hide / the tears in my - (several days). "She's with Anna." Paul's intelligence. He knew where the sister had laid herself in a crack in the earth, the stream from below brought up soft mud island. A beautiful woman, intelligent, Oriental, built herself a house with a small courtyard, in which a blooming tree, and there she was going to be the free friend and lover. A sense she was freely inventing a form no woman in that place had thought of. Dark wood. [sketch] DR describing a moment as if what's remembered is what was known at the time, makes an enthralling depth. That the diver may in confusion mistake the sky for water That the moth falling next to the fire was attracted by the dark band around it [Drunk Don] "But I will say this. You could build me up so that I could be something. I need somebody behind me." "This is a personal question, but do you bicycle?" [He meant do I have sex.] What happens in sleep, to make me afraid. There's something I have to find to do before / because [shopping lists for 3 Vets, Mountain Equipment Co-op, Deacon's Safety Supply on Powell: Hele Hanson rainhat, yellow raincoat, rainpants, thermal underwear, 3 prs rubber and nylon gloves, socks, sweater, caulk boots, polar sleeping bag, thermos, film, flashlight, air mattress, notebook, tentpegs, plastic, bandaids, foam and felt liners for boots] [letter] April 1 Tuesday I'll need the tent and my sleeping bags. Will you ship them to me prepaid (delivery not pickup) c/o Nora. I've borrowed from Paul but he'll want them when it's warmer. It's going to be steep rough cold and wet. A mountain on Jervis Inlet. Will you either write me often enough so I can rest on you some, or else let me know not to expect anything and why. I'm afraid of the misery of this job but it came to me with so little trouble and such close timing, maybe there's something right in it. Same contractor as last year but none of the same planters. Nora is the boss: straight. I haven't touched anyone or even nearly - it's mysterious to me that nothing I've written has reached you. My night voice said "She's with Anna." I know several things that might mean. You may be sick, I'll ask Sandy. I can't feel anything from you except perhaps that some of my misery is also yours. Do you have anyone to tell. - speaking to Sandy I realized this is the week the snow melts. I like that you'll see it. (She was compassionate.) I'm worried about the house if you leave: will you be sure to put the rugs away at Mary's and board up the easy windows.
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