up north 5 part 1 - 1980 june-july  work & days: a lifetime journal project

[alternative edited version]
mid-June 1980

[Somewhere in here I arrive back at the lake house from treeplanting and Vancouver. My car is in Beaverlodge where I left it in January, and Jam is still at the house. ]

[undated journal ]

on the highway, afternoon but dark, spray on the asphalt making a cloud around fast moving almost unseeable hurling trucks, the 3 seconds splashed windshield, holding onto the aiming of speed, from Beaverlodge to Hythe rain so hurled it was smashed hail driven at 45 degrees     car smashing ahead into it a skin of mist on the inside of the glass

pale green truck [my parents happen to be in Hythe when I get there] parked at Connelly's, I drive into a deep hole in a puddle, park, run hobbling in wondering at the strangeness of the hobble, one large and one small face finishing pie and ice cream, glad to see me, I was glad too, 3 letters for you, and you talk to me eagerly, you are excited about your mother's coming death, and more like her, wildly

nightfall from the table     past the pantry door the upper pane has willows in movement I see I could enlarge, go to     behind them, between them, orange and pink

through the near window to the left, in caragana dots & flowers, shadows, the big grinning face of toothless Demeter in a horned crown     you look from behind my shoulder & see it right away     I take its picture     moving makes her vanish or a hag

the sumptuous grass, a pane of luminous grass close and further, blades in their excellent bends     a wild toothless goddess of shining green     that the goddess force could be eccentric, not elegant

of all the photographs only the two nightfall gave me and then some of the later multiple ones

at a table in a kitchen with a stove, the walls clear     we're at a table suspended in a room     house in that way suspended in fields, the stones were still plain in silvery light at eleven, the grass's juicy moment, first fireweed, the rapefield yellowing in two days, two candles, yellow swamp flowers, we had a solstice, a bird, or two cut in circles between roof and trees, the microscope, two lovely daughters, lost women, we won't be here together next year, turning together differently now as if not afraid of being caught, lessons completing, small forearms, blue brocaded vest and blue jeans, white cotton t-shirt. I didn't look at her when her hair was long, seeing the texture of my photograph sheets

if it's the world & persons         all the corrections
if it's just one, 'experience' from here

immortality is when anyone has made enough of the private world to be able to leave the body without leaving the life

12 June

O the angel in your arms this mor-ning / 's gonna be the devil in somebody else's a-arms tonight

13
 
resist:
know but don't say

14

a look. "I got a shock." "your face me"
an intensity around the heart, it's not moving or jumping.

body's alright, it's full of dark shapes

I wanted to launch onto a strong movement, your small body isn't strong enough to want to. then how does she - ?

in reverie and clockmaking. she doesn't feel currents, she doesn't dance, how does she -

"he wanted to make them, he didn't want to break them."

the inheritance. genea - what kind, tutor spirit.

a person, seen at a certain distance, usually in a landscape

the summer and courtyard, place is time, it's then - now - believing it

holding off
the then of being with, not different than with the planters
struggling in estrangement

Any love's an eye.

What's the confusion in. The two, it's right, body's fullness of that feeling. Is it wrong will it keep me away from what I have to find or die (have I), when the arms around in a very close hold, whatever, yes. The moments in between, she: I practiced saying alright you can be here, he, all of you.

Any part of it a story: go in here.

Thinking of it, attempting, as a continuous, that entering makes a bulge in

Why: any part

Not why, the quality of experience

And then: who to help? They - I know nothing about the quality of 'their' experience

The miserable. When I am. But starvation, illness, it won't let me go (I've understood!), the tension is given.

Le Guin. Guilt and panic in jovial introductions. 'Marriage.' HD this early morning this early morning rosy north dawn mosquitoes hot under the sleeping bag, the wood room. In the pantry the dawn color directly, I don't forget you hearing my boots. Birds, the hidden ones.

Bryher - never used myths, wouldn't speak about marriage. HD taking to helplessness.

The long-handed woman in black

A rule that anything made should be made as if without a name on it.

The one
is a teacher who knows
making one to know
why I can't know
invest-igate
Making the house she'll see
Separate it to her and the one who knows

Back to exercises

The largeness that opens when

I think of christian teaching as made from some mistake, ie about mushrooms

killing = total repression

the glass case 'spiritual mother' but insulates

or they even have a disfiguration

when he was still in his mother's womb, saw a star

children - the coming personality
tree symbol of self
child - either spirit of child truthfulness or
shoes represent the standpoint
tigers and lions
 
hearing qualities of imagined speech
 
genea tutor spirit
the Friend

voices who aren't in your interest or from your own circumstance

speaking from an organization 'complex'
an emotional/feeling structure
 
there are organizations that are 'older,' more animal    'nature spirits'
keep up relations to organizations like this

There are also people who can just look inside and observe their dreams in daytime.

Dreaming two of anything means it's coming up

Takes things out of the water = fisher = saving

Horrible dreams - the unconscious wants a conflict

Always broken up and then rebuilt

Lion strong passion

The crying flies. Stop, wings sound a wail, silent, rub front legs, move, small jumps, jumps and turns 180 degrees, crazy stagger between the two candles on the floor, runs up nearly to the flame, falls. Does the candlelight confuse their orientation, are they doing 'something' or mad, an awful crying. Rain.

Again the round stone.

16 Monday

Yesterday morning waking, thinking of labyrinth confusions, heard a voice say "but you don't energize it".

17

Tells eyelids.

Kissing - I'm thinking of making it a film, "I want to say something," long tear from her right eye.

In Hythe laundromat an alert person in fine clothes comes in and knows me. Mary Davis in a chair. The fine looking couple, is it Horseman.

Read what happens as if it's a fairytale.
Assume dreams are readable because they are psyche structure.
Read what happens as if it's readable like that = it's psyche structure.
It looks as though somewhere it was known.
The dark with light places (color)
Darkroom work white branches in dark
Xerox
Cells

18

In a truck not sure which, forward or back, is the emergency brake position. Not able to stop.

Products of artistic fantasy attract the anima figure

To produce images and thereby catch one's own soul

The emotional and feeling substructure of a word or -

The silver like feminine

A fish has come to the surface with a message

The spoken word represents the act of becoming or remaining conscious

Voices usually have a hint of whose they are, the real knowing voice, "you don't feel that there is a being in it or behind it."

- I then tell the dreamer to notice that there are different people talking, that they cannot be taken only as the voice.

A capacity for mediating the form in which he can raise the inner voice from beneath the theatre of the witches

An illusion of beauty - the dead as close to absolute truth

Any unconscious complex can incarnate through projection

Absolutely wrong to cut it off, we have to keep up a relation to it so it can come back.

His inner witch seducing him into reviving corpses instead of taking the next step

And the clairvoyance of the nature spirit in human

Repressed falls into the grip of some dark and archaic father god image in the subconscious

Return to the older gods, they'll know better where the treasure is hidden, because they know the place.

June 30 full moon

driving to find grandma and grandpa who've moved, but to another house, a motel, it seems, blue chairs at a table, the old people come to eat when they aren't able to make for themselves, an old-fashioned plain motel court

I'm asking about Luke, Roy's evading, the room where the babies are sleeping, a new one in a crib on the right, two on the floor, the older one, in front, is that Luke? the woman with the new child is not Sara, is my sister, Roy with a wife on either side, what's the black haired daughter's name, it's Sarah, a shock or grief my sister is lying in, weak     rumors of Luke, who'd been traveling alone, had he been a month in a church, had he been in Vancouver

come in the back door of the hall, crowd of people eating, solstice festival, Luke appears in front of us, makes a sign not to talk openly, is there a note with a plan,

coming into the dark bedroom. above the girl baby, the air shapes eddies of her thinking and communication, fine, subtle. I see it with recognition and confirmation, two other sleepers with fatter, denser, comma shapes above them

courtiers with a leader, a document I'm trying to keep from them, when I have an instant to look at it, manuscript lettering, a vampire story, list of the names of women this one man will gather, I'm looking for Judy's name, see Elie, a chase through long forest grass at night, I lie off the road, they'll pass and are passing, but a woman or two come directly to me, and will bring them, they sit down directly, the document will have to be given up, I haven't been able really to read it, women betray

'in here with me' she was glass, she was sheer to the brilliance

July 12

the Paris Biennale

to be invited by Paris to something international

we hover in small talk

she cares who'll be impressed

I want to know, will there be a sculptor I like
can I take Luke

red silk coat

to use a fame for local movement

could I make the plants shine by looking at them
astral light. what is seen
Paracelsus the more the physical body is active the more is the double stupefied
magic - science and art of consciously employing invisible powers to make visible effects, 'will', love and imagination
 
the sidereal body, through whose organism we may look into Nature in the same way as the sun shines through a glass
 
the inner nature
magic inventrix finds everywhere what is needed
 
plants
acting married
the house, how sunset light comes through the north stair window
expecting Paul
stood on the table, she pinned up the hem
in her room saw her blue vest in the garden, strip of angled mirror

a steady rocking the same movement many times

being with it wondering whether not being willing to repeat kept us from whatever we know now, when I'm with you there, how is it     a sense of how to move is sometimes ahead of me, I know whether I'm following or not     you are not a person in the daylight way     pliant     my fingertips and hands work on your smooth and young skin     sometimes to induce my own sensation, othertimes, yours     a sense of having the dance to shape     impersonate - I understood the theatrics of inviting, flattering     she said it was someone else's skin

the dark green     overcast

corner spruce whose branches make the corner all the way to the ground     yarrow white heads float above the ground     green at different depths, the partly filled layer near the ground loosely woven     white bedstead

a sound with a slight ring, scraped the bowl

not a person     not the person     very young

-

[Janeen visits] don't remember I could concentrate deeper and find someone I didn't know from before, out of the vagueness we're both, all, in     what's really there - I've been excited you're coming - 'I'm glad to see you' - I've been not knowing what to do, making the kitchen warm, starting to cook - how could it have been - what did I want to hold - sameness - of course I still love you, the line of the cavity under your cheekbone, your fine white yellow hair, breast under green sweater, do you mind how I look at you, "I remember the day in your trailer," four in the bed not sleeping, your breast, if I felt it did you feel it too     "I don't feel that way about mine, they often seem more false to me as if I were trying to make up a person who'd be more popular than I could be"     "I don't know why I didn't bring it, you drew a picture and wondered how it would be if you were a nightclub dancer."

"I envy the way she and her friends can be together all the time."

the upper air is still light

the clouds are low, in clumps, grey, brown, on their undersides. between their brighter edges, the sky is light     pale     blue

the dark tops of spruce, lines, and of small poplars, with flicking circles     between them was the white new moon at the distance that's still completely sunlit

below and close, grass green, yellow green grass light

then the window was cold on my nose and cheek, and the difficulty of my eyes' focusing

I am here. one of the pictures I'm repeatedly given is this:

I often hear wind arrive     begin here     or here

finelooking nettles between the white rails

that the scale of significant event is different than daily time, searching carefully in daily time, still makes only a grain of event in many days, but those grains belong together

that's from the sense of work

July 21

frightened back by the gatekeepers
the buried trust
leaving the layers behind
cosmic guerrillas
 
in the name of the great first alien Life
from the worlds of light
multiplication of demonic worlds
'spaces' 'mysteries'
spatial realms, demons, persons
'to pass through them'
the magic of their sphere, a gravity

[reading Mead?]

the inn

who has thrown me into the body-stump?

to challenge the gatekeepers, 'I have come to know myself and have gathered myself from everywhere'

the letter who with his voice had awakened me

having penetrated into terror's empty spaces, placed himself at the head of those who had been stripped by oblivion

never accept a gift from Zeus, but to send it back

I remembered that my freeborn soul desired its own kind

standing below in the stream of waters

his image is kept safe in its place, it grows with his deeds and its form is perfected by his toils

the spark     the seed of light     the point

how has it been - from coming home at night on foot without coat or luggage or speaking, angry     wet grass     'yr best friend'

july     your lamp I don't know how to use     letters, your life     miss you is a loneliness in body, looking for you in your room

why it's so easy to forgive you     you're at home in my country     the house's existence getting complex forgotten times in it

when you leave I'm in a hurry hard to bear suspension from what     glad we got to sweet bodies from other goodbyes     glad to like how you look walking from house through garden to car     it feels handsome     send you lovingly a woman in a dress looks after you     I mistrust my trust     but trusted we'd built something good for you

don't forget it's a generic to you

the porch and front room, and outside bed

miss Luke     saw him, was going to ask him if he wanted to come, it was mother chat, I could be with him without talking

saw her with a small Chinese child
that you've been here
that you still dream of -
but is it personal
does it matter

this is the kind of talk of her journal and some of our letters when she was here - what's wrong with that -

I was with, balancing & feeling in the sense of being with

esther said dismissable as sandy wasn't

more her usual distant self

a squirrel taking a peanut, sawing forward with rapid little mouth, big eyes, looked like cheryl

And I said "I desire to be taught about the things that are, and understand their nature." He replied "Hold fast in thy mind what thou wishest to learn, and I shall teach thee."

With these words he changed his form and suddenly everything opened before me in a gash, and I beheld a boundless view, everything become light, serene and joyful.

"That light is I, Nous, thy god."

kosmos
limitless, vast
harmonious, orderly,
the sensible aspect of order is beauty
its inner principle reason
considered a divine entity
therefore the kosmos must also be wise

[My brother Paul visits.]

"I bought it in England - no I bought it in Vancouver but it came from England and still had Earl Grey in it - I can't tell where it was made, maybe in one of the colonies - come to think of it you can have it if you want."     tell her     she regrets

a furious raging against one's own integrity and life
inability to deal with a conflict
flattery     'a happy love affair not for always but for three years'     1977
fit someone to belong to you     engorged     constantly more lucid!
'I'm alright' and big brown van     'good bye' in a stiff voice     'me too' in panic - run out with the box
he says ironically thank you
I say coquettishly you're welcome

I've lost my great-grandmother's ring, and when I found t and c

left my jacket and forgot the cheque

sexually ravenous - Luke - dependency - that expresses itself in wanting to tell

"she's dismissable in a way sandy isn't."     phony.

a doubt, a countercurrent
déjà vu and unconscious fantasy
when she drove away noticing the wholeness of her car
egoistic hostile and jealous, sexual
'moments'

giving things away in bravado     little compartments     pot     'I see it in other people's places'

-

comes onto the road     what is it     shape of beaver but small, fur tail     marmot

beep, it won't go, has jumped into a position with its back flattened down, head up watching as if waiting for an attack from above

I turn off the engine, it stays still, fur blown into an opened circle on its side     wait     dirt road in front, brilliant light, west wind, dark green and glitter trees

prairie dog, rodent face     can see black longfingered feet

get out of the car and down on my hands and knees looking, it jumps into a defense posture with its back up and fur swelled out     shows its teeth, ears flat back and the fur on the top of its head flattened, greyer     his hair is lighter at the tips, squirrel color further in

I'm talking, we're looking intently at each other     I see fright and alertness     it's making a stand, hisses, puts its head forward if I move closer     won't run

I back it to the edge of the road     taking it in     small creature     to have to be so small     pushing through grass     crossing gravel and this extent of hard open road     looking at its face as a face     rodent

came to meet me     I've got very close, now stand up     it reaches its nose forward suddenly to the edge of my pantleg, like involuntary curiosity

I squat again, it's turned almost away, I reach my hand down to its back and touch it, then stroke curiously feeling the warm strong little body under the fur     round full belly     my fingers press into the hollow on the spine just back of the skull     feel back on the spine     you can let your ears up now

does it like the warm hand     (it's never been stroked)

its feet, not five, but four long smooth black toes, curved nails kept high off the ground on deep pads     a refined old oriental person crouched     with you I feel the car behind and above me like something that might move onto me

stroke with both hands because it's still there, but it looks across the road as if it's seen something, or is it bored, I'll let you go     drive forward carefully, looking in the mirror
the sense when I first touched it of being in a miracle, I must be a saint     meant to say almost fainting, this can't be happening
 
the outer & inner screen & ear
moving in experience
insisting the skill to learn is there
but learning it inefficiently snuffing it out unsure
 
composing
a fixed & varying
 
and by good love were grown all mind
 
love these mixed souls doth mix again
 
we then, who are this new soul, know
 
how to keep the perceiver clear     communication
an exemplary, but only thoroughly
want through and it is a form of it
 
the way seeing, taking images, following instructions
interaction and therefore love is learning how to be anywhere
slides - recognizing gladly     some early pictures of love     they're full of love
'work' a certain arm of it, that can be used to hide in, and therefore
'past'

-

[Grotowsky Towards a poor theatre]

to construct a score whose notes are tiny elements of contact

but if, in close collaboration, we reach the point where the actor, released from daily resistances, profoundly reveals

a kind of provocation

an accomplishment that suspends     halfmeasure

that he should transform himself before the spectator's eyes using only his inner impulses

for he had given up everything holy

whenever he commits an act of sincerity

it must be clearly established that what it is that blocks his intimate associations - lack of decision, chaos of expression, lack of discipline

what prevents him from experiencing the feeling of his own freedom

the exercise - if the body doesn't oppose

realization of the image in question

exercises investigate

determine the animal's centre of vitality

gait

way to use body to create the possibility of being interested

a process of research to destroy body's resistances

which images and associations produce an opening of the vocal apparatus

use the voice to build around one a circle of hard or soft air     a larger and smaller changing bell     and a sound through a tunnel wide or narrow

use voice to make a hole in a wall

to push

wrap an object
as if an axe, pair of scissors

imitate sounds - then speak language like that

the voice an arm to reach a certain spot

command of reflexes and improv

diapason voice's range

voice looks for resonators

not in a hurry but very bravely

no preparation is allowed
a prepared gesture that blocks the continuity
 
he must never listen to himself, this makes introversion of the voice     (then listen to echo)
attacking the space around

gradually seek for the chosen animal with the body     when you find its right impulse give it voice

you must immediately work out the first impulse within yourself even if different
what you're doing belongs to your intimate self

exercise the preparations, but climax can't be rehearsed or repeated

your whole body and your whole mind and all its possible individual most intimate associations
the essential thing is that everything must come from and through the body     if you think you must think with the body
better to act, take risks     of course you must think, but with the whole body, logically, with precision and responsibility     by means of actions
moment of conflict play or flirtation
when something changes automatically

that he can do anything, will be understood and accepted

to execute the score

during rehearsals establish it as organic

'give and take' and if, before performing, he is willing to make this confession, hiding nothing, then each performance will be full

must fulfill an authentic act in place of the spectators, extreme yet disciplined sincerity and authenticity

and it is this particular cat you now caress. these are associations
contact is not staring, it is to see
the contact is so minute it isn't possible to analyze it

but as a development of these exercises you should seek another voice, your natural one, and through different impulses of your body, open this voice

if you want to have a rich psyche
start with unfamiliar emotions
it will not be possible for you to tense yourself, the shock of sincerity will be too strong

perceive is different from understand

try to show the unknown side

you will find someday that your body has started to react totally, it no longer exists

the fact that the work is tiring is necessary

recollections of a moment when we were opened

kernel of the ethical problem, not to hide what's basic

the first time we take a route, radiance of the difficulty searching studying confronting

what I say is not the truth it's a stimulus

the hypocrisy and hysteria, that emotion observed isn't emotion

those scenes that give the possibility of researching a relation with - to the outside but not for it

the secure partner, this special being in front of whom he does everything

the limits not of our nature but of our comfort     because creativity isn't comfortable

and if he resigns himself not to do this difficult thing and refers himself to things that are truly personal and externalizes these, he would find a very difficult truth     gives the actor the chance to be taken

inarticulate confession is none

the professional obligations of a community of workers     not behind the back

if several moments of not doing, this internal silence begins and it turns his entire nature toward its sources
our existence, our organism, our personal and unrepeatable experience
entrust ourselves to something we cannot name but in which live eros and charitas

if they don't come easily

offering himself to the truth

an encounter proceeds from fascination, implies a struggle and also something so similar in depth that there is an identity between those taking part in the encounter

the series of shocks. confronting himself in the face of simple irrefutable challenges
catching sight of own evasions tricks
sensing some of the unused
being forced to know why do it

sense of laboratory

persistent study, systematic renewal of ways of observation     and dialectical relation to earlier work

the organism's resistance to a psychic process     to get rid of the time lapse between inner impulse and outer reaction     see only visible impulses

-

troubled about cunt, what it's like when I want to fuck myself, word too powerful to put in the dictionary. holy, frightening, it drags them into lifelong stupidity, they do it and are lost, the ones who want a bright soul stay away from it, her bright soul but humiliated body, I'm beginning to want it, I've wanted it before, would it tie me in a wrong body, some who do it are caught and some are fine, I refer out to them as if I don't know how to watch it in myself, does it make me ugly, outside with the round-end broom handle, full moon, now it's on again, no fantasy stays, inflamed, why, I don't know, doing it makes me ordinary, a person, that wasn't so before, it will make me ugly like sandy, many aren't ugly though they're caught, it's because I do it stupidly not finely, rubrub it comes, get up do something, doubt, has it made me lethargic, coffee, anxious, unreligious, have to be more religious than the christians to be safe, scared, the film, what to do, oh that is moon anxiety     anxious     bent forehead     angire to choke, distress     the tall dark certain-minded man with long fingers knew what he wanted with her     that and anything written about fucking     fascinates     fastens     can it be used up     I don't now know how it belongs with death, ashes, burnt out, used up     divided, afraid of it     to be used up by it if I go down as far as I can I'll find fucking and babies     now I don't risk it     with Joyce, if I go on, I'll find that and then, the point of stop, I've been there, no way through, am I sposed to give up what's possible and wait in case there's a tall darkhaired man with long fingers, him, dr macintosh, or carmichael, or a short bald blond man with repulsive hands, yes he's the one I can have, little babies I'd be afraid might look like him, maybe I could dominate him, alright, what's the petulance, it's that if I'm sent back to 'men' I'm sent back to paul, since I can't have any of the beauties, and am I to save him by managing him - he's ugly - he's not intelligent enough - what - because it's what I have that defiance toward, it's what it means, wants me to do? - or did I make something with him I'm responsible for and don't feel anywhere else, in anyone I left - a path made or found somewhere. the confusion with my brother     brother, a deformed small person like myself, not the desire image     what's this, he's in my house and more and more lost I think: being in my house, I agreed, but does it hold me - slower

the puzzle of how he came up in dope

I didn't have this sort of conscience when I fucked him to have a friend in Vancouver, to mend me from roy     inferiority in him not me

'what's the worst'     that

and then - I'd be where I began, before maggie, is that it     roseanne's man     'it doesn't fit'     but when it does

cleverly escaping, and losing the ring, doubt, what's the doubt, is it theirs, I love nature but am unnatural and nature patiently waits in my cunt

beginning with how he was with her     I'm doing something they believe is wrong     the division from them and my taught self, in taking sex to do what I want

but you don't doubt     you don't know you doubt, is it because you know you're in a false position from the beginning     but the way you are, it's often not as if from a false position

now I hardly fuck in dreams     london you     cautiously love your body     could make warm strokes the length of what I could reach

'you were such a sweet little body last night'

'and you'

press you into movement

briefly sweet and so sweet but incomplete

my termination is there ahead of me & if I'm the one who fucks happily I won't be what I'm supposed to be

what is that
I won't find it if I fuck
are you sure
no

reaction, I don't know, there's imprinting, her halting voice and knowledge, that I've learned and can refuse but only with fright of not being myself, reaction, I won't like her, and it's possible that her envy the form of her envy was in stopping me having the deep fuck marriage

conflict, she wants to be given away, she was early set to find an own way     the sincere cunt     what other sincerity is it like     suggestible

there's some clear fact to see & orient from
carmichael     that's what desire is, expensive
ken taylor     if you're very strong you make them fine
when it starts with desire
when it starts with knowing it's possible
 
the barking dogs you can still
the clear fact     that I live in one way and the opposite's there in depth in me
I don't know if it's deep because it's opposite or because it's the time root of my existence, that I'm lost by refusing
if they're not divided, what
I try to give it to you & we don't have babies
I wait & work with it & am true to it & if it's necessary & I'm offered a way I take it carefully


part 2


up north volume 5: 1980 june-november
work & days: a lifetime journal project