| up north 6 part 1 - 1980 november-december | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
Kitsilano, Vancouver, 27 November 1980 A mistake, complacence, then fright of what may be coming - worst is thinking of having to work all day, no, before that, move to the country.
28 Friday Fright from dream, Roy says, I don't see why you should ever see Luke again. Having to think about welfare. She when she went into the kitchen put her hand on a warm teapot. Restless. Car and library make me sick. Sssshhh to the librarian. Little smile. Until I go fast into and through Field of stones, Shen Chou. Breakfast, brought out ping a point and then sphere, intense to tell, and dream of the betrayal by my friend. "You've learned from him in the right way." "Yes I think so." In the car going to the library about syllables? is the word that comes (imero J-V and me, yearn writing). Glossalalia. Her language up there. She'd talked to Reenie. Another kind of syntax. I'm pleased with you. Simply into bed in teeshirt and dewy, the face I would be willing to love. It's hardly fucking except for a minute but the heat in her belly and palm. Sore kidneys by evening. And next morning. - R comes to me saying he doesn't see why he should ever let Luke see me again. I'm thinking of stalling him to find out what he's thinking. Am barefoot and start to go with him looking for 'jobs'. Wondering whether I'll go anywhere through the streets. He's wondering if he could get money out of my family for land. Ends looking at an inflatable round tent with heaters attached to outer ropes. Dream wakes me in fright before dawn. Earlier some piece of metal, doing laundry in a basement, 'she' turns off the hot water upstairs because I'm a stranger. The polish, layers of different sorts of shine. Something - a naked - in the ditch - bathing in a ditch beside the highway, traffic (yesterday's), I jump into/under a ---, and have to stay there as more and more traffic. Previous night Luke with rectangle openings under his eyes. 2 o'clock 'overcast' quickly changing place where sun is behind. Richard Edwards 1962 The field of stones: a study of the art of Shen Chou (1427-1509) Smithsonian Li Po (701-762) Shen Chou (1427-1509)
The poem an opening up of rivers and lakes When clouds melt they're invisible Clouds gather and melt into the light of rivers He examined intensively the changing effect of morning and evening over the mountains and the light and shade of the four seasons, storing them all in his mind.
the immortal guest companion for (travelers) scholars like you on a smooth journey enters the fresh clouds fishing at my door the yellow crane alights cliff and temple, a road of red leaves the yellow crane in his home of white clouds The old man has already changed to a Liao-Tung(?) crane. to cultivate a few acres and paint When they entered the mountains seeking the Way and went about alone, they were likely to meet tigers and panthers and fierce men. Monks were not allowed to carry weapons so they practiced this art as We swore to each other that if a time came when X could use men like us we would all come forward and work together. For this reason we all turned to practical professions by which to make some sort of living and threw our ambitions overboard into the eastern sea. studio where you plow with your eyes Being deep in the ground of the air,
north and south transit the same true light does duty at the palace of coloured clouds He couldn't prevent his spirit from fluttering about in the air. Later still ears and eyes were both blank and he felt his body fluttering as though carried by a strong wind, floating and again sinking in regions of glowing cloud. One party preaches the common good, the other preaches private interest. One kind from the bottom of the heart, the real language, the other from the throat - the narrowing Lessing's story, the few who come in to steer and intersect what's wrong with the story 30 Water off roof. Wandering in China and television. I go greener when she talks about developing. Not moving. Italy's earthquake. 24 hour phone-in for deficient children. Retiring on a few mu of ground. Jewish orphan boy. Abortion legislation demonstration. Hockey score. Cheerleaders. Attempted murder. Eskimo artist. Falcons released to naturalize in New York City. A woman diver. Leg pouring blood from shark bite. Putting her hand into giant clam. Handpuppet Lambchop woman. Cubans rich in Miami. The first free enterprise restaurant in Peking. Whole congregation roof rubble killed. Going down cutting vegetables. She cooks noodles. In the bathroom velvet pants and pretty shirt brushing hair. Oh white black hair. To go out to Taffelmusik. The wettest month on record. A black scrub nurse like a monarch, polished. Indians asking to be nations. Face less sick than yesterday. 1 December Water pouring. Yoga? No. Down. What sort of work. Today I can push on something. Newspaper. "If you ever want me to love me." "Your little blocks of dictionary in your journal." The order of search. We were rapping through the letter. How it was going! And then very lived. And is this ? It isn't. It's just watching 'her' be one thing after another, thinking, where's the emotion in it, who she became, and then slept, while I was seeing Violet and Henry singing duets. The way the church felt. She listened and was. The weak thought, she is not she, this way she isn't other, with the writing. It isn't like one mind, demands to explain, do you mean -, but a sense of working without drag. - What's it like here who with (an invisible red thread) joins people who are destined to marry Foxes transform themselves into seductive maidens and old men.
Jack Smith paintings with small [sketch] color in black or white large space 1978 Arts Council of Great Britain catalogue Those paintings were concerned with the sounds of words. break that sentence into different sounds and invent a form for each sound. I'd then invent the next sequence of forms in relation to the last sentence. Each line took me one day to make. Sounds and silence series I was hoping I could get a visual equivalent of sound. 4 above, 3 within - I think that's very beautiful. sound scores concerned with harmonies discords and pauses Certain forms are dotted. These exist as half thoughts. a visual written language that can deal with any experience or sensation The closer the painting is to a diagram or graph the nearer it is to my intention. austerity and precision. There must be no area that allows the spectator to dream himself away from the picture.
Want to know what happened with them and parasites, partly experienced.
The campus. Don't know what dorm I'm in. She reads the list, don't recognize, go look, been remodelled to be cheaper, no single rooms, many beds in one. I open closet doors, see single persons sleeping in debris. One room has a neat bed, kerosene lamps. The woman's awake. I ask her about people living in these attics and ends, she says they're mostly writers not students. I feel I have no choice in what I do. Certain things happen and one is drawn to objects as experiences. I'm suspicious of choice, I suppose because I work instinctively, drawn to subjects without knowing why. Looking back, they always seem to be the same subject. When I finish a painting, I realize I've been there before - although on a different level or wavelength. I want a painting to contain thousands of experiences and images. I saw the vagina as a translucent chamber of which the serpent was an outward model . [Carolee Schneeman] enlivened by its passage from the visible to the invisible But to be there enough means forms of concentration and emptying out - making space, that a presence might come through. Watercolor patience Messiaen "When I listen to music and even when I read it, I have an inward vision of marvelous colors." Baby lifted up to look at the afterbirth as soon as it had been extruded. This procedure gave the child second sight. He saw tiny people and their dogs coming out of the end of twigs. his ability to fly - to pass out of himself and return visit the Land of the Day on flights throughout space and under the sea when suddenly he fell backwards and tumbled down through the very thing he was carrying, and from there on through the house passage down towards the inside of the earth
In work. Bending forward quickening. Pleased alternately sore. Thoughts stopped by other thoughts. Squirm. It's physical intensity (as if attacked), belly, solar plex, throat, forehead (I thought of motors speeding up). Speaks jealousy as if it doesn't believe it. There's innocence in their being with us.
- The sickly winter. Party worried. 2 Snowing, put on white kerchief. Sometime later starting to like city. Sidewalk meetings. Natalie's open face. Library - Smith - the Eskimo flying singer. Wanting to make black pictures, assemblies, combine by hand. And the saltglaze potter. Can you saltglaze white porcelain. That I thought I was ready to visit you, and the place appointed was T and Diana, and where are you. Rain and snow, walking streets under.
- Remote friend why. I know why. Evening in the studio. 3 In Banyan looking for. Afterward note what. And Naam looking. Knock on her door, she says Come in from far back. What's it like. Pedantic, not much time to look and feel, excited about war. Lost in abstraction but trying to say the doubt. History is 'a vocabulary'. Sleep, and she comes up saying she was missing me. And what happens then, talk goes to dry little dried apple kisses that set (blue) fine line expansion in the lower belly. Stay still, and you are the touch I'm the girl. The face you are when you come up (Nellie) fox spirit. Follow the stroke over the rim and back. White lilies. Likes. From above, a spotlight on brown sea, a sailboat. 4 She goes to dinner with C. It loses its lightness. Looking for Jack Smith find so little except evening writing. 5 In cream I understand my work - roundness - all I can recall - then it's confused. Tripped into jealousy, fight back, the fight brings out more - your game now's to see whether you can get it all - "We would feel you" - and again having to fight the way I don't want - wondering if it'll give me another face. 6 Getting up to the tight but phrases I liked. Take me to work considering. Party. Jane's skin. The pretty women. De Courcey. Drum. 7 Try out stroking. Interesting heat movements, folds. Cavity stirs. Float and attention. 9 Letters Andy, Katrin. She goes to work on them. When I write letters it seems less complex and then the fright to discuss. Tears. Distance. Supermarket and Lennon [at the cashier's I see by a headline that Lennon has been killed]. And then knock. The face's color. [C] "You were in a car, there was a man behind you with his hammer raised. I said to Trudy, Look there's Ellie, we have to save her. We ran out to try to warn you but the streets were full of men." Because it wasn't erotic the look could be wider. Describing the wispy work. Pressure to make writing that can be read out. She tells the story of The marriages between zones three, four and five. "The country wasn't prospering ... But the truth was they were in love with each other so they had to break themselves to try to understand each other." Loving the writing looked at without quotations recognizable story. And then handing over the connection to a Film Board show.
2 of moon. Dreaming mail at Pender St coming through a slot into enlarged Diana's hall. (Meantime) Mail was coming through downstairs 6th Ave slot. Katrin. "You came into my life with the same strength as when we met 10 years ago. It is wonderful. A smoke web dances over the letter." Andy to say Luke's in London.
[sketch] and here's it's little ghost - On the horse's neck. Curled on the horse's neck, no rein, lying on his neck looking around at the morning space. Fields and green trees, it's all open. A little pink. Must be somewhere further south than there. Will I be able to control the fork. Roofed passages sloping down. We're moving fast coming to the horse's farm. Look down through the slit. That's my father's voice. Before I see him, her, next to me. I'll feed or water the horse boy buckwheat grains on the ground for him or his sister. I've got them in my palm and decide for him. Was she the one with plans for the farm riding school milking machine. Telling it in a lagging voice felt the earlier dream but only swimming pool, a boy's dead? body pale skin. Small head small face looking close its magnified disruptions forehead open pores black specks on the nose redder next to the nose. Last night I began to tell my fear. Not being able to see enough of the whole to be able to make a move. The writing I was loving has nothing in it, it's just nothing. Then she went on and described the rest. - Sunday. Paul's dream. He's sailing with Peter and Terry, thinks to go back for me. I'm waist deep in the lagoon, shout I'm already here. He doesn't know whether I'm saying it to keep them back or whether I'm really alright. They sail away. [Jean-Vi visits] The little bones body. Cadaver. Atmosphere. She's jaunty. Well-mannered. Upstairs she looked sad. "My pallets in friends' houses." Voice. Dog.
Ishtar was served by harlots of 3 different classes no doubt the red color of the goddess and her garments - That sense of brain shifts (J-V), possible ways. That sense of mental alternatives.
The slave trader Oda with a man. She buys women for herself. He shows her how. The harem travels. 10 Body waking lies there peacefully. "Three letters for you up here, Epp." Staring at Arnold's [letter from Arnold Dresser when his British girlfriend leaves him].
11 Back, walking. Want to go back to sleep. Little face. Employment office. Dark. Liked them, characters like television. Gargoyles. Paul with sobbing laugh, "They haven't been able to figure it out, they know they've been conned." White flesh with red marks. Brain won't touch the writing. It looks like nothing. Fright. There's forbidden in the heart of creation. 12 Heavy exhausted J-V bus and evening. 13 J-V here. 14 Week working. Luke. 17 [sketch plans and list for converting Jam's place to a duplex]
millions of years of isolation lyre tails Island of the moon National Geographic production on CBC TV [Am sent out to a job as the only construction laborer on a remodel site with two Greek bosses, Demetriou (Ted) and Ianni.] Sore back. "You've never seen a labourer before?" Feeling the disposition of the other two. "Hadda grab the imagination of the country." Not much but the sight of plaster and lathe. House flat directions. The low back where it's stiff, is it going to be like that from now on. I'm not as strong as they are. Morning in the footings feeling short arms, balance mistakes, their tone, whether they're watching how many boards I carry on each trip. What time is it. December 20 Hello December rain. Not remembering what a birth sensation is like. It was not pain not sex, a wider feeling, not a sensation of the shape of an organ. I'm thinking of it as a band over the belly but it was more inside. I wasn't tired after. The body's bliss deep white rest, not with pictures: with the belly muscles and limbs in cream. Like sinking into white. Then it would collect from small, the shape of a minute rising with the clock's line. Once around and it would be gone. Airplane over. C drawing me to give her my pretty findings. How the lemur sleeps on the branch. I was feeling she'd see it as I told. The ride on the horse's neck. A star that's sucking its twin's hydrogen. That's the lighter, leaving helium. Then the other star has hydrogen on its outside, which is the reverse of what it had. Usually has. They're the distance from here to the moon. - To get to what to do. 24 $350. "Sandy knows more than you do, about ... She took it in the belly for me." Alarm. The light on the floor. Rain. It's not hard to get up. Kitchen. Knob to light flame below oven. Empty and fill kettle, cut two slices, peel an apple, slice into a bowl, cut banana, pour milk over, set to warm on cool stove top. Make tea. Make toast. Cream cheese and peanut butter. Milk in thermos. In yellow rug room with heater and tea, her day at work ... When it's time lie down next to smooth face, neck below neck and chin. The warm stone shoulder. "I had a small anxiety you wouldn't wake me." Thermos smashes as I get into the car. "Can I leave it there?" "Is it the brown one? Good." The corner onto MacDonald, she waits for headlights to pass. There's a surprise for you at my worksite. Ted's truck. The boy at the same time. Piles of lathe. I can see them. The day's work goes vividly in crossing one space in many ways. On the ladder knocking lathe from above. Vivid window holes. Old brown frame wood. The very small nails left behind lathe. He's shoveling plaster. Ripping up 2x4's from floor and doorway. Hammer tapping corners down. Slow tidying. He isn't interested in meticulous work. Pushing dirty insulation pads down. Rain. Lunch café. Rum in the teapot makes us like them. Two or three ambulances. Traffic. They'll play poker all night. Ted shuffles about Ianni's wage. I go on mulling it till I think maybe it was a reversed shuffle. "You can go home at 3:30" and dragging then. Mustang Cobra with venetian blinds. I say last night in a dream I heard a Mozart duet (two young women) to see if he can hear. He's blank and programmed. I talk to him like a girl. He hurries over if I'm doing anything rough, tearing frame out, takes it over from me. "These sure are old houses." "Is that how they look to you?" The fine long open room. Clearing nails the worst job. Rain, bus stop, Main bus strange people, man with a maroon skin color talking bending down to a much smaller East Indian man with a wave dipping over one side of his forehead. A woman in a pointed cap, no teeth, munching her gums. A man with her quite fine looking, whiskered, in white ankle shoes with buckles. Mother-daughter dopey. An East Indian girl with her hair waving down her shoulders and back, oh you should wear it up in this dirty city weather. A man lying on the sidewalk. In front of the old library two tall cops and a car on the pavement. "Do we look like bus inspectors? Tell someone who cares." "Do you know there's a man lying on the sidewalk up there?" Their different tone, I'm keeping walking, "Yes, we're just ..." Crowds at the bus stop on Hastings. Long lines behind the windows in the liquor store. Bank. They cashed it. She's tromping in green cap, green raincoat, green down vest, orange flannel work shirt, green work pants, dust, dusty boots, dusty post bag, in it logging corks. She's on the phone, "No, I'm going to forget it immediately!" Live from Sheila's letter. Victor and Vincent's test questions. He juggles them. How it felt being interrupted with the moebius. Their bright faces. 25 Sleeping on till daylight, walking in talking. We won't be together forever. Go speechless to her for some reason and she isn't ready to get up yet so we lie abed. Paul about Nina, she scrubs her floor every day except Saturday, "scrupulously clean and beautiful." I was like that when I was 17. And 18, 19, 20, 21. Diana uneasy. He knows what I'm like because he is too. Paul in the middle. Vision of floor plugs and few pipes. Then she wants to lie down. I'm eager and glad that I can. It falls into shambles and desperation. Chopped eggs for Christmas dinner. I go to bed. 26 Six thirty, clock in the bathroom. Blood itch woke me. Lamp, rug, coffee, breakfast and typing a version of the blue pages. Laundromat. Reading Omni. Sweat, weak, reassure myself there are two more days, seem to hallucinate it will be Monday tomorrow. Go out desperately to look for dinner. Listen to what the lawyer and the doctor said. "He's a beautiful human being." Man joking how he goes into bars. Is it kind she is with him. She brings the soft woman in when I don't want, she helps me because I can't - After The elephant man [went to the movies alone] a boy in a storefront says "Does your foot hurt?"
26 Come back flowing words because I need to know what is happening with us, she has a look so close live and bright-eyed but so alien, it's a fine person more than I can grasp but what am I doing with it, it's fine to see, I'm seeing, but what's the bewilderment of my time. There's immediate talking, talk talk, this is my voice sounding girlish and ducking down under. She's forty, not forty, little child, judicious advisor to see the best sentences work. There was moving together, the wet holding my attention and opening more. I was confident in the movement until it broke and was gone. Really no attention and that going on against resistance. If I were dying I'd leave you. A house I lived in. It was decrepit but I lived among all the rooms. There's a candle. Avalon Hotel. Office roof panels could come down from a little shake of the frame. Journey. Home from La Glace. In the mist a woman in red dress and pants with some garden whiskers carrying boxes of vegetables from post office to truck. I say anemone. Dusty mist. We're going home. The mud's deep. There's Judy's jugs, a shoulder yoke, too heavy, and we lose the chairs and chickens. Have lost all we were carrying and don't get home. Traveling with a mad boy (girl), free-for-all, pale messy. Now I'll stay with the older one curly haired. She takes a picture of the one who's leaving, that's how I know she's leaving. What interests me is the derelict house. There was someone with me, was it the mad boy. Some who'd lived there first (Cordeau) whose place I found and moved in. Woke from first sleep, she's coming for her pillow. The face. I say something. She rebukes: You don't have to know me now. Is there a hug? I turn my face away. From 2nd, sweating, she was telling me about the Swiss girl, the year she was away. What is Lise like? She is lovely. I wasn't jealous till I woke and then it was paranoia about information. Water pouring.
Note. Yellow shorts. "And what were her legs like?" "They were beautiful. Don't tell her, she'll misunderstand." She plays the guitar.
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