| up north 6 part 4 - 1981 march | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
March 1981 [en route to London staying with Jean-Vi and Kathryn]
The room on the corner. Armchair under the canopy. Red California mild wine gallon. Lace and bamboo slats on the walls. Pink painting on the floor. Seeing it against the light it's pink under silver. Putting book and jacket on the bench sitting down to the grand piano. The man playing with his head back, eyes closed behind his glasses. -
formed out of them by turning lathes and rulers and measure of angles the four main supporting willows square, the rectangle, solar physics from delicate light blue, through ultramarine, dark blue and violet, and finally into inky black dim workloft omniplanar surface [sketch] Lies have a different sound. The secret could not be put into thoughts but my body knew it.
In a bus in depression. I had shot and killed a man, invisible gun in a bag. Will I tell. At Grandpa Epp's house I'm left sorting wet cloths blue black corduroy white, sort into light and dark. Jake wakes with Look at me. - Wednesday 6:30. [at Luke's school] Coming into the room where the girl was playing on the front line of the steel band. Biting my lip not to cry. The tiny boy from 4th dancing like a man. "Why are you looking so worried Luke?" and the teacher firing social questions over some unexpected dislike.
with a definite idea of the help that was possible and of use She had the gift of turning words in a manner peculiar to her. without perceiving a single one of the multitude of fine adjustments that composed her presence. I feel that I have had a blow; it is or will be a revelation of some order. I feel that by writing I am doing what is far more necessary than anything else. I wrote the book very quickly, and when it was written I ceased to be obsessed by my mother. I no longer hear her voice. I do not see her. [Virginia Woolf ] Bees, bees, your master's dead, an' now you must work for your missus. "Do you see what you read?" For the first time she grasps it. Each star is really a sun like her own. The other exists. Traveling in the circuits of the book. She describes. So the whole sky is moving over us toward the west. Width of the full moon is two minutes. It keeps giving the date at plus and minus infinity. It isn't what it was but it is working the same way. an enormous curved and whirling landscape a charming lacy sparkle holding an interval
She enacts the image. I dare!" She lets go her base. She feels her own intricate existence in the dark and tries to scan around. The events of looking to know something / listening. She is on the verge of understanding. Her structure is merging with [2013] When my meaning emerged in the pretense it was incorrect. Before assenting further she will know where she is and among what powers and conditions she is set. How will she get answers, here? On every side, above, below, before, beyond, blaze steady fires - drift upon drift of them, burning against blackness or veiled in filaments and gauzes. She selects a pair of suns. Magnify. the play of another lawfulness [James Tiptree 1978 Up the walls of the world] [Pan Am dates] 16 March [Sara Chisholm] She's the more ... one color copper hair down in pointed strands, pale wide bones, mouth as if over no teeth, village mother. Chats to cover, it's not important, keep it moving, staying in touch with the many persons, not thinking to refuse, anger if it comes. Cleans the middle of the room. There are always things to tell but it happens I cut across them. It was a village and theatre school. The accent would shift. I murmur any nonsense, not knowing why. But it's listening to the voices or commenting on them. None of her careful analysis, no distance or making a picture of myself. Andy said simplifying and that flattered me, I keep repeating it and setting it away as flattery. He struck life into the talk, in the midst of them, I was hearing, as never happens among them. Her talk is work. Her body, I notice, all bodies, neck and shoulders from behind are pretty, the word suckle, "and he bit my nipple," looking as if no teeth, and then the teeth, far back and buckled out of line. Wearing vivid things. Adventuring to jumble sales and coming home beneficent. - He doesn't mind jumping up to go into family confidence, he's part of it. "No it isn't too long but it is too long just now." Cuts Jake off. The chemistry set. Photographing lego. "He seemed composed." [Annabel said of Luke] "Yes I think he's composed." I'm grateful for the cuddling. She caressed him easily with her foot. "When I was a child," but it doesn't draw. Books don't much. Tidiness of the two shelves. Drawings of technologies, James Bond. Clear and simple boy. Half an orange half an apple may I, milk at school. [Roy] Tall and he's thin, swayback. Familiar voice in the other room, it's just familiar. What's wrong with their brains, pretended knowledge important from scraps, knowing nothing. Joined into family life. Je-di-di-ah in one voice - noticing the repeat - does he do that with the babies to imprint himself in them. He'll follow my laugh at the television, silences alone in the kitchen, turned off. A grey color, thin head. There's no special love with Luke, he prefers the babies. "Shall I make a bottle?" "Yes please, that'd be lovely." [about Jake] "He'd never seen so much Mars in anyone's chart." His smallness. Hair cut so it swings over his eyes when he ducks at having his bluff seen. Long incomprehensible talk. He can't say what he's thinking, uses words he's heard and knows approximately, but without his experience behind them. He's a raconteur, one of those self educated who doesn't know language isn't only for flash. "That's the end of my talk," brings hands together. On his pot with us, "I want to keep an eye on those two." He means he wants to stay in the conversation. - [Maxine Hong Kingston reads at the ICA.] Big face, in it is an old Oriental woman, small body, those little legs in high heels, a tailored tweed suit. She fumbles the flaps of the pockets unfamiliarly. The hand while she talks is feeling wondering down the large flap, where's the pocket, just in and time to take it out again, skirt pocket, feels further forward than the pocket is, finds the edge of it and moves her hand away. Two rings on one hand, a bracelet and watch on the other wrist. I take her hair back straight. What a strong face. Isolating the face, wanting to stay in front looking at the face. "I hope there'll be a flight." The warrior chapter unwritten until it was out among publishers. Including her husband, his shiny shoes, who'd been seen looking from the corner, but not interesting until then, red face, reading too expressively in a carrying voice, hers small cracked and sometimes seeming doubled. When she came in: it's going to be an American voice. A dream? Someone ordinary writing in something like J's new spelling. "A mind and soul big enough to hold contradictions." "I didn't realize it was a double message until I'd finished writing Warrior Woman." "I forgot --- was a weaver." The sound of the shuttle. "You gave a grite deal of yourself." The interviewer speaking out of one side of her mouth closing her eyes in repulsive bliss. "I thought I'd xerox it and maybe in two hundred years it would be published." "It was pirated in Taiwan, they translated it in a week. The Germans are taking four years to translate it." [her mother] "She's reading it aloud, a half hour a day." "They read it very recently, two weeks ago. My father stayed up all night to read it." "I thought of the narrator as someone still unformed." Wanting to tell her about J. Work on what has been spoiled. 17 Sitting with Luke on the bed pulled my finger out of the sleeping bag red. His glance in a hurry. To Sara, for him, "And my period's just come." She, not knowing, "That's good, get rid of it all at once." Pile of wet toilet paper rags. The night on the floor, blowing, cheeks sore from nose blowing, nose skin raw, streaming. Jake drugged, Josh coughing, Michael jumping up, Do you want Mummy. Helpless taking the sheet off the mat, I think the sheet comes off. Telling Roy the day with Mrs Wood, "When I'm like that I'd jump in front of a bus," to shock Luke. His head whipped around. "But I'm glad that shocked you." He recovered it, and I was thinking, is he thinking he'll look after me, "You won't be able to jump in front of a bus." Sleet from ICA with heavy shoulder bag, sleeping bag getting wet, Sara's scarf. The man in a doorway leaning out, a good face, he seemed to be weaving. He was looking at me as if he was going to ask for money. I was already angry about the cost of buses and how I can't go anywhere. "You must be kidding" I shouted over the noise of a motor. He called me back, "American!" Began to say something. I was complaining, "You've got more than I have, why don't you give me 50 p." He's looking me in the eyes, his head is swaying, we're slowing the sidewalk. He's grabbed my hand and I've hit it, "Don't --- ----." He says "What do you want, tell me direct, what do you want." I'm silenced. He opens his hand. "Alright I'll give you 50 p." It's in his palm. I say thank you righteously and put it in my waistcoat pocket, over his mutter, "I'm no begger." He drops back and I rush forward. Turning onto Oxford Street, the white 10-day moon due west between the tower and another high building due east, sun blinding, onto Wardour Street out of a lane. They must have been near the same height. Just at Camden Town, the department store before the market, Madge Herron coming toward me, without dogs. I know she won't know me but I stop her and say hello. One of her front teeth has gone all brown and half the size of the other, it's fascinating. I'm looking at my memory picture. She's not more aged but she's larger pored and greyer faced. I say what comes, is she well, I haven't seen her in a long time. She says she has the flu, it's all this slime, they won't tell you what it is, do you have that too. I say it's the London air. She says no it isn't they have it in County Kerry too, it's a bug, it's a virus, "I think it comes from outer space." I say between planets the air is so thin the sun would kill any bugs. That's just hearsay she says. I say yes it is just hearsay. I say I'm glad to see her still around. She says "I'm thinking of doing myself in, if I could do it, because of this [flu]. I don't have the courage. They say I just have to live with it, I've had it a year and a half." To clear my nose: "You go into --- and buy some snuff for 15 pence, that will clear it right out, come on, it's just here, we'll go now." She's begun to move. "I'm going that way" I say. She's disgusted, "You could try it." "I have tried it and I know it works but I don't like the taste of it." She's not liking me. But we try again. She asks sympathetically about my illness. "The doctors are all on drugs, I've seen them, they're low one day and high up the next, you can tell." She's being tedious. Is that why I suddenly say "Nevermind, it will soon be spring." She says "Fuck spring" and is gone. I can hear her voice. And then, just on the corner, Janine [Wyman] calls me. The difficulty of being in front of her grey moustache, thick lenses and even yellow teeth. I'm rapidly telling the story of the man, to make her laugh, and then she thinks to ask "You didn't take it?" "Yes I did take it, I was angry," and she's laughing, shocked. She's already offered to give me some money. Feeling the plastic bag of her groceries in the pushchair because I'm fascinated to see it and the plastic gallon of oil, as babies. And the story of Madge saying she'd do herself in, she can't wait till spring. In this sickness and poverty being brutal. Michael asking to smoke. I say I hate it. He says he smokes to relieve the tension when there isn't an empathy between himself and the person he's with. I close my eyes. He is hideous and useless in his shocked yellow hair and whiskered sunburnt face, but was that a charge? No that was the period. Says he's no one, his writing on the floor, the baby crawling through it. It's grand mythological names, Christ and sociology phrases, social law is not to think to oneself meeting someone He's a fool, Sara scolding him for his thoughtless use of the phone. He isn't going to cough up and is costing money. Is this anger together with Roy. "When Sara and I were getting back together I said there's one condition, no more babies. Nine months later Josh was born." Josh at his knee repeating "Give me some tea." [Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove The wise wound ] It is possible that male and female sperms have different motility. If mucus is allowed to dry on a glass slide you get a beautiful ferning pattern as though pathways had opened up in it. May ovulate at almost any time in the cycle under stimulus, as the presence of a desired love. A child may be said to resemble a lover encountered when the mother was pregnant from the husband. Colleges of women in the past. Real knowledge of the tides and coastlines. The twins, divine and human. She is more vulnerable to aggression and to derogation. Aphelion and perihelion. Follicle stage - it's growing - begun by pituitary - secreting follicular stimulator - they pour out estrogen. Ovulation - the follicle turns into a gland - progesterone and estrogen - lining thickens. These hormones cut off premenstrual . And then 3 for menstruation. I'm hearing a taxi motor. May look at first like buckling under to an unwelcome female destiny.
Wail
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A discussion with the devil Things that happen accurately of themselves Beneficent and oracular serpents A doubt: the changed notion that will help, implies that the first situation is real. If I accept the change, I've accepted the sense of condition it refers to. The egg tree her pentagram nature, her magic. Spaces of fluid acting over hard bones. The two will beat together twice a month. When it rises invisibly with the dawn of the sun
The body knows the moon passing overhead. The structure of water a crystal lattice is altered by the passing of the moon overhead. Menarche - a particular inward mental opening.
A field theory of natural rhythms (all the) Hate (which is to say fear and desire at once) When we say erotic we mean felt experience.
But if we penetrate the distortion a wide view opens into the genuine realm. Odyssey - the male has to experience the import of the female before he can meet her perfectly in life.
A special relation to the spirits of her menstruation. Lochial blood.
External senses less at ---, inner more All the traditional goddess names mean womb or vulva A locality is where you lie in childbed lokhos
The sea in its incalculable mobility
The powerhouse of body prayer: conventus
She forbids herself what her husband would forbid her
- Hello , I've joined you again. The images from Memoirs of a survivor. - Lynne Bell "I did something. The way I did it was ..." I like her work. She laughs. Rachel projects on her lover's back, inside her shadow. The image of the cup, red, the lovely pubis, wrist, hip and bum turn through the outline of the cup. Elizabeth Lutyens. Three lights, red white and black. Lynn's blond beard, Rachel's formed face and very small body. The Austrian, tall, beak nose, eyes dilated almost to the edge, looped long neck. Hyperthyroid at first period. The throat swells. Always and in every time and place attempt to express the secret thing. Licking the bloody cwm. Knowledge of opposites. Through dream reading of her mother: becoming twice as big. It falls apart. To integrate the total structure through the uncountable unconscious cross-ties that bind every element of a work to every other element. The Shekhinah [this passage upside down, don't know where it goes]
in deciding which rules to take in the Pisan his present is lovely to feel
amid serried lynxes
Politics. I'm learning you without you learn me In heaven everyone able to tell exactly how it was
- an extension of vision into non-electromagnetic realms acoustical imaging system lenses and mirrors of optics have quite recognizable counterparts in acoustical imaging systems and though the materials acoustical lens design slightly more complicated by the existence of two kinds of waves, longitudinal and shear
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