| up north 4 part 3 - 1980 april-may | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
April 4, treeplanting camp high above Jervis Inlet [Photos: tent on a ledge - cookshack] "All this winter I was just todally into sprouts." Going into sleep folded behind the steering wheel watched as if one mind go on from another. Discussion to image, as if illustration, of the two facings of a shirt's front opening. Pulled back to see if it was illustration, brought back the two parts, could do that, couldn't think with/about them. Sense of lapsing. Sense of 'couldn't bring them together'. Curiosity. Uncomfortable membership language. Flat traveling on the barge platform. The little, very small, dipping movement I didn't remember until I felt it lying on the porch to sleep. "I used to think a lot about rawfts when I was in my teens. It was a way of going to sleep." "I wouldn't complain." "I don't like the idea of eating people though." "Lying there it's easy to think you're on a rawft." Then what happened: how I was rescued. Six o'clock siren and then crow's one caw, in the borderland I felt the crow, remembered hearing crows early and then not again, in the hotel room, as the waker. "This is the new reality, uh, we're here" (waking in the lumbercamp bedroom). 5 Rock. Red fibre. Sand. Roots. Working uphill, hands wet gloves, standing lost looking downhill, uphill, across, where to go. The bits of hail coming out of cloud not much higher, mist coming up out of trees lower, there thinking no time since then, where was I, with her, is she here. Earlier, that was her. Will you hold ontome, no don't ask, but I'll think of you ifIwant (can't leave her voice). What is it for, for difficulty, so far from - ("My older sister was very adept at catching them, she'd turn them over in her hand and stroke their belly and they'd seem to go into a sort of trance. She'd leave them lying around on bits of kleenex.") Was I losing my time for years trying to learn to not be a girl, when I could have been good at it except for shame - carrying split cedar trash - badly - but loving and needing to see others of them able - fight - all the many whose whole time is labour - ("Feels like I've sat ona splinter," squatting over a washbasin on the floor). Art: art training is making me bad at this. Slow, this is for rapid not particular. Faint: hunger. The way I have to keep track of what it's like to - is that the writer - and if I thought differently could I fly down. I'm old and crippled and will be the worst. "I realized god was a person and I fell in love with him." Are you the person I am when I'm between the continuing time and the discontinuous. Rubble dreams. Well, and sad, freedom without possibility. Joyce, if in dreams they are all parts of -, then in waking are they, or is that the temptation - lye on the platform to sleep - in the constant light I've learned to think of moving through - something moves but it's not the light - possibility of light moves - lie in it. 7 Concentration camp. Is it too steep to try. Unable to decide whether to move left on the slopes or try across right. I left my bags went down for lunch. Long time down over slash, eat, feel better, lose most of it climbing up, at the top realize I can't decide because indeed it's too steep, I'd been paralyzed. Don't fall don't hurt myself but - "caught, just as they were before" - what could I be doing instead. Will. "You're really blown away aren't you." Gandalf fell into the abyss. "We used to look in the telephone book for people called Smelling. We had all these pickled onions lined up to put in our mouths." 8 In J's arms, I turn a somersault, it's fine, we go down to the water, J passes us carrying a guitar, she snakes quickly through the water, other dark haired friends, I look at the tomato plants, some on thick vines others on small bushes (cherry), none quite ripe. Notice garlic set around the stems of vines. Luke's made it for me, railway car, the end that isn't garden a pink room with an armchair, ordinary furniture. I like my house. 10
12 [Kim] First from seeing how she was as a builder assistant. In love: thin neck with dirt in two creases across the front of it. Her shine, eyes and mouth. Sitting in the sauna plastic room daylight she washing with peppermint soap from a bottle, I splashing hot water on shoulders, putting my feet on the board to sit in the bowl, wash my hairy damp. We were talking about my writing. Warming at the airtight, both put on our clothes when he came in. Looking at the body on the slopes, am I shining too much at her, it's there, does she know. The way in treebags, short legs walk under the long body when she was naked unexpected lovely waist, she's beautiful. Her deep radiation. Slow. The stretch in her smile. Focus. At first staying back fighting to do business, sweaty neck, dirty hair, muscle in her arms, light freckle. There were restored Roman baths, tile, turquoise water, I went on through the museum, came out in the unrestored jumble above another pool, stone blocks, columns. Walking through countryside with the sickly young man found another villa, kept, a wing on either side, long pool. Day off breakfast Kim Jane and Nora talking about acid, Wren. Jane "the flavour of yourself." "It's like your rawft." "That's - good Jane!" A quality of smile. I'm still telling you what happens but this afternoon on the rubber bed, under down bag, asleep, nearly, when I put my arms around you you put them away. "No I'm beginning to really love the little puttings-up, 'n' puttings-away." 14 Roy brought Luke and a small girl child of his, pale, blond, we were friendly together, we went into a movie, from inside I heard his voice very low, bass, telling me to take them, two words repeated, not clear. I understood he was telling me to take the chance to get away from him, and I did, through London streets, I was thinking again my London, to the YWCA that will take children. 15 They were here again, R and Luke and a little girl. - Soon time? Figure it out, let me begin, how, gnats, fireweed grass and spruce, like that, plain life, chosen, begin, chapters, lonely, but at the right place, money, where. The sight of people, many things that can be seen about them, somebody was, - could meet on their own ground, where they felt at home. The last part should always deal with things in the world of men. - The other also felt it, the other also felt the quiet, that penetrating atmosphere.
Navajo. Moth: the particular one who is fire crazy. Near ultraviolet components Sensitivity of visual (ultraviolet) pigments Are not attracted but rather compelled by something in the visual and locomotory system to approach lights they are seeking to avoid. A mach band Phalenopsis catocala Souls of the dead, love and marriage Nearly all of the older Catocala names are female. The Catocalae all had amatory names Judith, Sappho 'Clara' when lines in the lifetime of the moth are distinct
Some little girls who were dancing completely absorbed and nearly in a trance. Went to the animal world for dance elements which made the greatest demands on the physical constitution, technical perfection, musicality and expressiveness of the dancers.
Remember that your flying machine should not imitate anything but the bat. (Listening - Rilke) the wanderings of the female half of the soul Much of it I improvised as my mind was quickened.
Immediately following the new moon closest to spring equinox Housewife has to know, for her job of offerings, a complex of overlapping weeks. A few grains of rice on a number of small squares of banana leaf every day. to the god of the hearth fire (on the hearth), to the god of water (at the edge of the water container), to the --- (in the granary) not to stand before them as thieves To our ancestors, to the guardians of the compound, to our four sisters Small offerings hung on all coconut tree palms. Ivory flowers. - from whose creation is expected some radiance I only work when I feel contented, balanced. Our religion, which needs art Only a few have the gift of searching for what is essential.
The shape in the air I can't recall the water net Or they even have a disfiguration. April 17 A new sports car, yellow, drove it out through snow, remembered lights but driving the way in dreams, I'm never able to reach the brake, my right foot drags, to Anne's house, because I had a trial, M connected with me, a hearing, Anne's room had a ceiling sculpture, plastic with lamps hanging, Mennonite church makes them, crowding the space over the dining table, at the hearing it would all come out, my relation with him would be clarified. Stole a place setting from a service station, green and white, wanting something fine. When I couldn't stop for the corner, went over the curb, a clunk below, "I bought a sports car but couldn't drive it right and wrecked it." Dear one: are you alright. I miss you. I've taken over your house, I've taken over your garden, I despise you for your mistakes, I never forgive, I'm lonely, unclear and whiny. He repeated it yesterday after the letter, no rock, no moan, no whine. I was out of control, sobbing in the tent. This morning when Nora was kind - when the checker showed the number of my misses, "She plants like a gardener", "I am a bloody gardener", going simply one line at a time finding places in almost all the piles of branches. Duff then the grey and orange, sand, with black outline, repeating the pleasing sight, slice through the skin, sink the blade, pull open the bottom of the hole, push push roots down with the edge, scrape sand around, stamp nicely around with the butt end, pull test. Where was the tree in that line, know the place to try for the next. Vivid: sink the mattock in and feel stone, scrape around whether it's broad or just a little rock to pry out. Rain, at first I kept it out with the sweater, liked moving in it without being wet. Then the raincoat, try it without the pants. Somewhere down below I wailed. Upslope he looked friendly. Meant it and went back to it and then sobbed. It was about how you have one grievance after another and use them to abuse me. Tear drops and water drops from the rim of my rubber hat falling together toward the moss or duff I was bend over and couldn't see. Protest, I'll take my love away and then you'll know, I'll try not to be bitter, I'll tell her it's finished with you. Then I'll be a pilgrim again. You could be my friend because there's no one I can talk to like you. You're that for everybody. We've wrecked it. You never did - I never did. With Anna it was that I saw my slavery. You don't have any empathy. You are a terrible friend. Two silhouettes on the shade, is that why I've cried so much, but I don't care. (The different degree of pain from the sentence you set up to get me - "I've asked Marty to be my sexual " - hot knife. Steadily working. Will the wet pants make me ill. Walking home, ledge road turning rising and falling, ankles turning on rocks, gravel and rocks look fresh on the sides, the cat was through, look up at fractured cliff in mist. Deep loving color. Trees above it recede without moving, every particle of rock and mist runs backward, I hold still and wonder at the way it's done. There's something to it. 18 Drops riding on whatever grey suspension in the stream. Crying again. Felt Luke's wail. 19 Days going fast now. Rain, third day. The morning, day, evening like the same one still. Pain of the boot biting down on my heel. At the end of the day down at the bottom of the slope falling. "Running a line down", doing it more mindlessly because the other way makes me frantic and rebellious: straight lines, finding the sound of sand under piles of branches, finding airy duff, holes between roots, blade falling through to nothing, blade sounding rock, rock under a few inches of sand. Cedar saplings flat branches waxed lacework, is it crochet, a particular weight, chainstitch. Hemlock, the leader's weak tip's pretty flop. Bramble young vines pink blue like the ink stain long mauve whips with thorns. Toads fumble. A squeak, animal or my bag. Am the floor most of the day, when it rains I don't see far. Intensity of the sight of slippery logs to crawl over or walk on as bridge, road ladder, caulk marks there from before, loggers' or mine. Right leg moving carefully, moving so slowly, to balance not slip, not hurt it, not fall. This is stupidly oldly slow, I don't like the sensation, heavy boots, weight of the trees in the bag, branches to trip over, holes between them, crawling on a scaffolding, dropping between logs to dig, using the handle of the mattock as another peg. Water in cascades today down the hillside, next to the road. Rain and I hardly noticed it. Bewildered couldn't remember how many trees. In camp at the table. Buddy Hardy and Madge: to be heard. Not scrupulous, expansive, watching the faults but trying it. When I'm lowest I beg to avenge myself on 'her'. Water down hillside falls down a crack, spreads into sand, when the ground has taken all it can (saturated, she didn't find it) it just slumps. 24 It's like beginning at the, it's like the worst of what I remember, retreating from all sides, not their protected, not this continuing misery of being in the wrong place. What is it what is it. Something happening that I don't know, her or Luke. Strain of their view, challenge it, make it right, constant unbearable envy hatred irritation. Their music. Jokes. The awful language. My awful language, the person I don't want, sentences come out, useful, like theirs but wrong, criticism. Painful cunt, is that the sadness. Stories told again, the attention she holds and how she does it, was I like that, 27, pretty, not having a baby yet, still hoping for the mate, fighting. I feel nothing ahead - everything's already wrong - Zola, weight - if it isn't romance and cheap dreams, what'll it be - my mother's face - struggle not to lose more - oh body - and the way his mouth - his v-neck sweater. Last in the order of preference as a woman, and last in the order of working competence. Hoo! On the slopes, breath comes out whoooo: expression. 27 I'd asked the operator to clear the lines, a sound from the telephone as if she had, she said I'd been shouting a lot, made it difficult. I said conciliating, I only shouted sometimes when it was necessary.
when at last far on into the winter I got to the Northern City with a knapsack that held none of the usual luggage last night I dreamt of flowers reflected in a river and woke with an urgency to be gone the Szechwan Road is an old song-theme a sinecure in the Department of Waterways the yu (traveling, wandering) of the early t shifted south
the color of the light I thought of coming into a chapter about Sufism to the world of the Friend
in this state to name a thing is to identify oneself with the sound or act that produces it a transparent language structure: verbal roots, painted or sculpted images: a troubling gel of experience doesn't favor synthesis at the level of description, dry lyrical visuals, Persian the language of paradise its rhythm, although so powerful and penetrating, follows no fixed measure, it is composed of the unforeseen, sometimes using a striking rhyme, then suddenly changing its breadth and pace a state of soul it supports, intoxicating nostalgia, with great sobriety, sun on desert writing with its joins and uprights the Arab costume by transforming a surface into a tissue of colors or a vibration of light and shadows, stops fixing into a particular form of 'I' as an image says I [menus] May 2 After first day being cook, gone to bed behind the truck doors, have to get up early, was thinking of Roy and realized it was happily: the language of his notice, Burghley Road, St Albans Road, I was thinking it was a time to be proud of, protesting all the while. Pottery classes. Alert at a table, head's angle to eyes. Today's successes: a revenge (recovery), muffins without baking powder, I absently put in baking soda, they were good. Learned to fry a good sunnyside. In among sorting materials into containers, bread, yeast shot up into slowly eddying molasses water, Keith and I watching it like the sun, saw two comical lumps eject blundering up. Buns with round skins. Chocolate coffee custard. Salted cucumber, from Turkey. And in it speaking differently, from a different position. Addressed. Sun. Working not stopping, half drunk cup of tea. Feeling time alright, not crowding. Not thinking about main course as if I knew Elizabeth would do it. I like the bodies, shall I tell them. 3 Sunday Bill in his age will have a child with a young dark girl called Angel. I met them in a restaurant, looked at her brown legs under her dress, like Jane slim. When've I ever dreamed him before: happy in that part. Many materials (am I an engineer). Making many things at once, moving through stages in processes, things on simmer, remember them at the right time. Live with the bodies, watch who's how. Trouble in bad language, will I understand it. Speak usually toward a remote. See persons distinctly. The bread is warm sponge. Sophia was hounded in her sphere because she would not worship there, had seen a light, loved it, had faith, was lured to a lower sphere by a light that resembled it, and there her power was taken, she lamented, repented, and he found her there but didn't save her until it was allowed, and then by setting a light around her head that prevented them taking her force. Light-power and the body of her matter became shining throughout. The way she had sung praises to the light. Below in the earth of mankind. And when I was constrained I sang praises to the light. 4 Coptic a tongue analytic not synthetic - sentences small clauses very precise and almost independent. (Not a learned - complicated incidental sentences, 3 or 4 different clauses whose elements are synthetically united.) Babylonian Persian, Syrian Egyptian The questions of Mary, in Pistis Sophia notes an atmosphere I know, different from Sufi yellow light - greyer or silverier. Indian cookbook - sleeping until 2, to have time pass - beauty rosy grey lentils Masur Dal - rice - making someway I've never seen - spices' colors, without knowing anything - pile of chili - tumeric - peppercorns - wanted red soup, orange vegetables - it was grey grains - yogourt - coconut - tomatoes in triangles - salted cucumber. Small man with glasses, I'd been in his open room looking at his things, on a work bench, a window cut out of a picture attached to a little stone. He had to tell me again he wanted to reoccupy. When I met him later at the festival (in front of a mirror, moved my shirt over so its zipper slit wasn't in line with a slit above the waist), walked with him, he said "Is sex useful to you?" I looked for the right answer, "Yes I think so but only if the timing is right, it has to be " (vaguely). "Do you mean the petting?" "Well yes," and found I'd put my arm around his waist. Thought: oh? I had worn a skirt. We came to his home. Central grassy square, a chain park fence around it. Some German club or that sort of people sitting drinking beer on the grass. His room in the far (north-east) right corner. His work bench. Asking "You mean it was willed to you in perpetuity, you have it while you live?" He nods (up) to the people on the lawn: "It's theirs." We'd seen Maggie, she knew him, she looked a teenager. I said I thought he seemed young too. Woke directly thinking about the dream, that he'd had good sense. Also, like Don D. Cooking: happy. Playing. Planting: miseries come, bitter about men, leg, Jam. Rebellious, confused, why was that face coming when I stopped quiet. "You're very caught up in that." "Yes I am. You don't know anything about it," closing eyes. Is it last quarter. Joviality. Assurance long legs. Undercut by body's helplessness to make itself happy. Except on the back of the truck, and it was there in dancing by the airtight. Wrong wrong. Allday suppressed irritation the language the jokes offerings refusals. While planting was easier, a happy thought, shorthand for conversation. 8 Kinderfest. Black fine dirt on the church parking lot. Races organized by the grownups. Prizes: oranges, chocolate bars. Ribbons red, blue, white pinned on shirts and dresses, small head pins. My friends Edith and Verna not my friends, the only girls near my age, both ugly, Edith scrawny with glasses. Her mother dressed her ambitiously, but she was a small mean-spirited soul, dry permanent in her thin brown hair. I knew she was a small mean soul. We visited, played but didn't love each other. I put her in my fantasies as companion, because she was my associate. Verna looked better when she plucked her eyebrows. Watching what they both wore. Privately contemptuous of their ordinariness. Edith's mother, a pretty body she made a lot of. Mean little face but earrings, faint lipstick, ahead of the congregation, rebellious, house and clothes. The other plain women were staking it on the afterlife but she thought she'd make an impression on anyone. The girl's race for my age. Edith and Verna approach me on the parking lot. Edith's mother has said they should hold hands with me and run slowly all together for a tie. I incredulous. A look I know from Luke's face. 9 "I don't know whether it meant physical death or some sort of identity death, or whether it was just fear, but ever since I've been in some sort of mourning. I feel this is not the right place for me" and began to cry. Tears and beginning to ineffectually bang the mattock into gravelly soil. Moment of balance, am I doing this, what does it mean, does it mean something about him. And then he separated himself by misunderstanding and clumsiness, interesting, shall I bother to protest. "I don't understand why you're trying to claim it." You like to be helpful, well yes fragile and vulnerable certainly but you'd never know how. Cross. "Have a fine afternoon." How reply: fast, smashing the mattock down, "Thank you very kindly." The girl who liked to read. 11 Somewhere working outside with a crew, over the hill a messenger, telegram, handwriting on the address my name in Roy's handwriting, it's him, drunk and weeping. It's London my companion, at night differently than when I tell Mark or Elizabeth, and you're gone. Burghley Road, the Konstam [nursery], Scrubbs. I would like to continue from then. Olivia's village, the house and garden. 12 (Roy again) What's he doing.
white red turquoise brick red the speed of light Dorothy: the interest in her experience, her skill in deciding simply to tell it. And why I'm not or wasn't, and when was she, ready to do that: because of trying, wanting, still to build out the qualities of it - images from science intoxication - the raft shell speed of light - 'speed of light' uplifting who pictured the earth as an island surrounded by ocean and covered with the celestial dome the sense of love in cosmology and language study this whole universe contained in the spirit that is in him
An image and where it might come from - message from someone, from body, from secretary, from the time or place - about someone, self or ambience, and possibly other unknowns. That Xios is a state. Child, and old person, a royal, an artist, a man and woman, a servant In these days, what often happens, a thought, the sense of helplessness, I move it aside, say I don't know how to know about that. Yes, and the reply, that I'll know how to know when I act on knowledge again. I say I will when I'm in a situation I'm not wrong in. Planting faster, by not thinking about the terrain, being less careful of trees, and then it's no longer consciousness appalled, body gets exhausted. 20 Curly laughing, I'm dimly, come see me out, can't write, grateful because you're working and strange looking. Dimly dimly grateful you're not the way they are in conversation. Oma and how thinking of the two little people made me strong enough to suddenly phone. Arms around. Thoughts that I'm without thoughts. Body very quietly loves warms and softens. Very quietly feels you leave and wonders. Small confusion, I'm being sent and want to go but is there something I don't know. Oh. Like oh: quietly.
(the cell is irreversibly injured) - A play. Is it writing I'm putting off, or was it always something else - a religious sacrifice? The only time I wrote well, when I passed through the inner door, I felt guilt. I must find that again. If I can't, maybe I shall find a way to give it up. I cannot go on this way. Josie at Deren's film knowing the story better than I do. The face has smoothed, the body's smaller. The film woman with long grey hair.
fossil imprint and photograph young insect prothallus liquid crystals sonograms - birds hear same notes (it's only in resolution of very rapid succession that) bird's ear is superior The warning cries of many small birds make location of the sound difficult, so bird raising the alarm can help its neighbour of another species without endangering itself. A bird in possession of a territory sings more beautifully at the boundaries of the neighbour's rival. A thrush whose recorded song ran to 193 stanzas.
Cousteau - oil drops that attract concentrations Pale greytoothed, house in grey, nothing's moved here. Walking beside fat plants. She's sliding off anything said. Dimness again, don't apprehend her, don't have a free connection with the street, am looking for something to share, or to be in existence with, laugh wrongly, suspect she has been nowhere. Ten thirty, seem more hours have passed than could be, was there a missing time when she took something, I'm so tired. In front of Pine Free [Clinic] sitting on sports car fender looking at myself in the window, red shirt long neck strong shoulders big impressive head, I like to look at her red cloth in strong light brown face eyes squinting lonely. Maybe it's lonely. For a year and a half? Yes. [undated letter] Outhouse - I'd thought too - beyond the driveway in the trees east side of the road the hunters take, somewhere near that pile of rocks where I cut down a tree, door facing lake. Got it? Garden - don't dig up anything except old carrots and potatoes, are you opening more ground? If you thin or weed that curly leaf small creeper you could stuff it between paving stones to replace bigger weeds there - it's aromatic to step on. Finish the courtyard if you feel like working with stones. You didn't need to ask to take the bed out of the kitchen though I know why you did. It has been sad these weeks, but came peaceful before today's letters. I want the house July and August, maybe June, if Luke doesn't come there'll be autumn and winter to barter for. Did you send the tent. I'll be in Vanc in a week and will do your errands. I liked your talk, won't reply, but go on. - The Kensington book couldn't find, it was dark and in a hurry, and this trip into town was only 24 hrs, Sunday, wasn't possible to find your window. Next chance maybe in 3 weeks. Am on the way to Bella Coola, still mail through Nora. Vancouver in lovely spring, smells of buds, oh can't tell you, the air was happy. Woke this morning in gravel pit swamp in Williams Lake, blackbird songs. Borrowed your Pistis Sophia. I felt you saying it's another year at least, though I knew it.
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