| up north 6 part 5 - 1981 march | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
London March 1981 [new hard-cover 8x11 journal with a pale blue cover] Hello book. Her blue one.
The one Jack Smith. Square. Off-white that where white is over is pink around. Has the grid but in bits, bit squares and rectangles. Then the rectangles over, flying out, red. They're construction bits. Overlap in arrows when he wants. Near the explosion another sort shaded. The four direction posts at different distances. Why are there fuzzy bars. Pink. Yellow. Because he learned in other paintings to put them there. The grid is shaded. I think it's saying there's another way to see it. What it is. Some culture. Airy. Distinct. The explosion's cool. A red side and a green one, no top and bottom. It's developed, in a white non-solar light. Thought of against sun it's not a good light. It's the taken part. Turquoise and red. The red's left and dominates. The bits blown out of squares so there's the set free and fluorescent white. Those colors have been taken out of the white. It is not sound. What are the yellows and oranges doing. Some black. Are they on the way to red. Yes the reds are mature. "I had a dream like that. I dreamed I was lying under the sea. Then I realized I wasn't lying under the sea, I was what's under the sea." Startled, ah, ground of the sea. I felt myself it. Moon's foam over foam. [sketch] I quickly saw the ground under the sea and at the same time felt myself it, the switch, I felt the switch, it was one down, is that one back, wider. In Brakhage the eye for one, and when black-red ran out of the lips. The new one in water looking, gazing, able to gaze out. [Window water baby moving 1959] Leboyer There was a man who opened my eyes. He said, birth is painful. I didn't understand, I said, oh yes, we have -. He said, no, you don't understand, birth is painful. I still didn't understand, I said oh, yes, we have -. He said: being born is painful; for the baby. Then gradually I began to understand. It was brought out, without falling, circled around to lie on her, without howling. She stroked it. In the water it seemed too loose, I could see that already it was being misunderstood, it was looking around and it was crying, but with its eyes open. "I knew him and he knew me." What I was seeing was the possibility of these new births with eyes open. If it's so gentle is it a birth. Intervening among the necessities - I mean open-eye birth seemed important intervention. "Your husband will be envious." The choirs or roving bands of the goddess. [visiting Olivia and her husband Chris and son Michael in Oxford]
"Since then I haven't been able to write a word." Her father's mistress the secret from when Richard was one. While her mother was having a cancer operation, the mistress an abortion. In the years before she died: "It's too late now, I should have done it years ago."Luke across from Chris. "... Beethoven." "That's Strauss." Flash, "Da-da-da-da." Where did he learn that male testing. Satisfied he'll win. (And she.) - Alright, Olivia: I wouldn't go upfront to her, though she asked, and why, because I'd have had to say how ugly I found her. She was saying "arrogant" and it meant don't judge me: that's just what I wanted to notice. When she was asking at the end, I knew I was resisting and knew it was right to, the question was dutiful but I didn't know. I would not, will not, open up to the hideousness. They say that would change her. I'm demanding she should change first. With her: it was holding off. What about Chris. He's doing the accepting. He doesn't understand. "I told him I'm going to try to tell Ellie." The story she's stuck at. And then I didn't want to hear it, and wondered why, if it would 'help' her. I knew I didn't want to work for it, she'd sit hunched forward, her mouth doesn't quite let her speak, it makes her words too small. That's coy, is it like Granny. The actual question seemed to be whether I'd had a right to come there, without expecting to like her and unwilling to work to hear through her. Then what was it for: to see Luke and Michael together; leaving from Paddington, in the big space of Paddington with my arm around his shoulder, his bomber jacket and grey sweater and patched jeans, his choice of costume. Delighted on the train realizing it was 20 March [Luke conceived in Oxford March 21]. When she said she'd died I wouldn't feel it though I remembered, it was as if I in spite of teachings was feeling it right to blame her. What I was holding against her was that I had brought myself out, and what I thought I had to tell her was that I wanted to go there again. The superintelligence. "I'll never have that again." Is that what she means when she says she's died. The difference of Andy, who's sane. Her mind, what about it, the distortions, it makes it not worth -. I held back because it seemed not worth -. The way everyone's seems patchy. condensation over the field A spiritual crisis she muffed. "I like you." No that won't get me. It was after cider, telling the jobs. Janitor. Rematch? At the river walking with the right distraction of her talk and the rest to delight along the flat blue pale blue between tufted green. Horses in the large field. Port Meadows. A mudpuddle. Path with a bicycle track cutting into puddles. The water standing up on either side of the wheel. Holy city of Oxford on the skyline, with four yellow rectangles and the wrong metal hospital above sand-colored stone, white. The longlife size of trees leaning over the river edge. River without banks. A red airplane buzzing nosedown in the water. Walkers, Sunday afternoon. A few who stared recognition. Smooth blue and grass green alternating. The colors of the surface together, heavenly blue and green. When we turned back the sun almost down and slightly filtered: on hazel? bushes, single bushes on the water margin. They had small round things on small twigs, they were in silver? Red? Winebrown silver I can still see. I can see the river meadows flooded, abbey enclosed wall with turf grass mix with feather leaf, daisies, the small round leaf plant. Don's green slime poured out [she said]: what makes his body pull. She's the kind of person flies buzz around. Thinking: is this suitable to her, was she always this. "He was up against the wall and he had nowhere else to turn so he turned to his family." The blissful sleep on the couch when they were up. In the morning Luke's long thin bone hug willing to be seen. Michael at the table sang My father's lost, I don't know where to find him. Silence around it. Luke changed the subject. Tulku: yes, I'm going there. -
with eyes like a wolf the heart of the boy in the woman was pierced the distant one her name became 'utterly clear' behind the scenes transition place at the korithalyia danced with phalloi an Artemis festival hetaira companion the hawk swooped calls them away from their daily work at the looms strength in this instance means knowing herself as hetaira away from a star de sidere the tragedy incurred when you joined the hetaira, you lose your child If being together is really that - I mean if it is, being the other, then, the I would state and remember nothing, it would only follow. The skillful follower. No one guessing Olivia's father's, except Jane's mother. or words and loomed monumental I watched understanding that this was what existed. I wrote that when an act was right it was preceded by a feeling of rightness. and that I knew I would never read again did not dislodge my knowledge of what was true It was just that I could see it. Every day, it seemed, more arrived from the south. Everything I touched that year was touched with the knowledge of death, and each time I tested it. The lean-to at the top of the lane. - [I visit Luke's class] When I stood closer he jumped back to what seemed to me a surprising distance. He said Luke has worked everything out. Mathematics for the sense of relations of their own experience. Mr Hassanali's jumbled classroom. What does he like best. Reading. Their books of different kinds of experience. "At the beginning of the year I always go somewhere with them." Solids. It had changed when I left and he saw me out the door. By gentleness. "He works very hard. When I was away for a week at a course he spent most of the time outside. If he doesn't like someone he'll play up." "He's careful about manners, he thinks how to behave so he won't hurt anyone, as he shouldn't."
If he thinks the soul has been captured by an aerial spirit he makes a miniature boat with a wooden bird at one end. In this boat he journeys ecstatically through the air, looking to left and right, until he finds the patient's soul. - Annabel [Nicholson] I know now when not to leave something. I want to know that I won't desert myself again. The sky is full of light and I have been in it for the last few days. I made something to take there and now can go anywhere. I can see where to go now and what will guide. The light is in the sky with no clouds to watch what is happening, to see things moving in time only lights without anything around there. I've assumed that move must sometimes have prepared not to become defeated. "Josh got to him." [Sara of Roy] In the tube, on the street, clear appearances of many different people. Many are felt. certain workers and collaborators in the universe because its networks of information and connections goes so deep and wide a woman who experiences herself as a medium A gossip is also a member of the congregation of childbirth. wircan weave With O the sense of disinterest, except in the meadow and seeing the tipswept pink cherry trees in the streets. Park Town Circle. Dream of choosing among old things. A sign of willingly accepting a guide: a veil. "The witch in my nightmare" monogenes without the tribe Tone's good weaving. "Yes it is fine." These then I give you; enquire of them strictly and delight your heart.
bearded lady prayed to be relieved of a husband if he loses his fear of delight
Saying yes to taking pictures of the Lego. Thighs shine. These thighs are bright from inside. The backs of my hands are bright. strongly responsive
rank up with institutionalized schizophrenics on the Schizophrenia Scale Luke saw the bees, many bees, among the cherry blossoms in front of blue sky. He saw and said it looked good through the lens. It is still school. Long dead times. Get away into reading. University. - [offer to show slides to Luke's class] Going to Luke's school, and after, and before, the heavenly day with the village roof and moving clouds, through Janine's window, Tony's Café, the sun heat at 134 bus stop, in a hurry to find the staircase up to Hornsey Lane. Front garden flowers, the bench in front of Luke's school, Coleridge school, and being prompted at another moment to go in. The bright projector. Luke being sent out first to sit by my feet and the girl who sat up against the other side. Too quick. Seeing my hand shake at first, and explaining too much. And those images. They understand the images. "It's like ...," "It's like ...," eager eyes, "a chasm," "a rock." "That's right, it's like a -." With Jake and Luke the cherry tree, the magnolia, the pink, and he saw many bees. Jake's explaining. Love. Luke holds the flowers, he's a procession body in the shadow of the wall, flowers in right hand, in sun. We bring down the Lego creations. Changing the setting for sun and dimmed. Flying light Jake horizontally over the tulip through the rhododendron up to see into the window. He lets himself be flown. I imagine what he sees. Luke concentrates with the camera. We finish them before Sara and Roy come home with Jed in orange pants and the proud big cheese. She marvels at the flowers. Lorraine has given a lot of Lego. When I go home oh Luke's long hug. Crying with Janine at the story of Eliot's birth and pain.
- Jane Warrick "Stories" I wanted to explain that this morning I dreamt a tremendous leap. I jumped further than was humanly possible because I could. There was a curve in my body as my feet landed on the ledge, the curve uncurved itself with powerful ease. It was better than anything. It was the magic of not being what I have been talking about. But it always comes from a turmoil that brings with it the fear of dissolution. He seduced me with his delicate innocent ways. He never asks me questions about my past and sometimes when he makes love to me his mind wanders; once his eyes closed, his face took on that same look of exhilaration I first saw and he began to hum. It was as though he had gone away without effort or knowledge and it was because of me that it could happen. Often myself, I would see beautiful important things, fragments, scenes, I would feel anguished but without the pain. Once I saw an old Chinese man sitting on a structure of bamboo and bandages. I felt calmer, more quiet and awake than ever before. Sex became a journey for both of us, these wanderings were precious and we hardly ever mentioned them. - The sticky oil that forms on my forehead and shoulders. Ivory-like eggs given out of pores. My fingers find. What's not there: it's the presence as will. A transparent standing away from the working together tribe mind. The way I think has become dialogue but what I want is to change dialogue for speed and distance or
because it would be shaped like a moth or butterfly what recognizes but can't bring knowing out direct who leans out the window
The grass comes toward me in waves Who enter and clay their food She sends the bull after you
a welter of seeds: barley millet poppyseed peas lentils beans wife wave weave It's mortality. Will this work make me join the ones who'll die. - [little show I think at Four Corners]
The sacrifice temptation others refer to: forgetting the personal story or what there
The way we had to break off before I came, instead of being able to write, like (noticing not feeling, I felt Annabel and the hugs) people together. It's breaking apart time, lonely spirit quite normal in the family. Alright I liked hearing my writing on the tape. The embarrassment of talking about Jesus. Dream with two like Roy Kiyooka. We know each other very near, we know each other not at all. After showing a night aching leg and head, all day headache. - [I meet Sarah Black and her sons Gabriel and Thomas at her girls' school class reunion in Canons Park] Seeing Sarah broader, smiling, the wet tip popping out of the huge infant's mouth, silent Thomas, slate eyes. The shrill voices. Carol behind sunglasses looking. "Did you become a nuclear physicist?" "No but I did do quantum physics, I have a very liberated husband." The spreading tree. Archaic steps, platform walls, levels, under it. "I often see this part." We sit on the [station] platform. The baby sucks. The sun sets opposite beyond the British Rail fence and bushes. She has on kneesocks and her hair down her back. "They know you so well. The way they said the names." "My Rumanian friend was killed in a car accident." A mole with long whiskers. Fishes from her nipples, milk, water. This huge baby entirely made of milk. If it really will be September to February. - [British Museum] the search for rare materials the horned headdress of divinity tight long leg bull shrewmouse sacred to Horus the calm scribe Behind his left leg is a finely modeled figure of a boy in low relief. [sketches of Horus head, bull head, seated scribe, standing Egyptian in profile] "Are you sad about something?" [sketch of female torso*]
- Her eyes were lit - a bird's - set it seemed to look sideways. I could stare in the reflection toward the door. She felt a gaze and looked carefully at the woman on the door side of her, then she looked straight at me in reflection. When any eyes connect there seems to be a change of [sketch*] Jeans jean jacket gilt scarf white socks pink print gold stretch slippers.
Book in Steiner [bookstore]: pay attention to changes (to feel fairies). X's concentrate because they're afraid their physical bodies will disintegrate if they don't and because it's a disgrace to miss anything. Imagine the sky a lattice. while this web hangs in the sky to open the Eternal Worlds in a pleated robe, is sitting barefoot on a throne drift scent of balsam - Multiple shadows of fingers can look like overlapped long feathers of wing, pleats of the Egyptian. Multiple lights. Waiting over down slope through black orangelit wet London familiar roads. Painful waiting to sense or feel something. He isn't coming open-hearted to cuddle now. When he played shadow with her I was injured. The body has become a member of their flesh. The closeness of 'mine' not related to my family. It's this flesh in these thoughts and divisions separations at a loss. A long time without direct address. When I see you will we. Ha, at this moment can I. Must be dark of the moon. Delay. It's out of control from failing Sunday night, or why. Is there someone to meet, no, it isn't going to be known, it is: more of the family, worry about the rent. "Ni-ni, godbless." [letter to my mom] They're living in three rooms at the top of a house in Crouch End. As I got off the bus from the airport I recognized the neighbourhood where I'd stayed with Greg the first summer in 1968, when they landed on the moon and we stayed up till 2 a.m. to see it on television. A little voice said Ellie! Small boy with brown shiny hair Luke's color - it was Jake (he's already 4 and in school). Sara looking older, gaunt like a dustbowl mother, but with beautiful copper hair unbrushed. Kitchen crammed with things. Josh the blond second child, Anglo-Saxon, straw-blond, a mass of forehead and slanted eyes. Jeddie crawling, in a stretchsuit I bought Luke ten years ago - it lasted through all her babies and is still strong. Dirty corners. Many perhaps useful things saved out of rubbish tips. Luke isn't home yet, he's at chess club. Sara makes me a cup of tea. She's going unbothered from task to task. There's a cake cooling, she says it's for my birthday. - It was Friday the 6th I arrived. Josh is quiet on the floor. The baby falls over in a corner and cries. Jake is coy and uneasy, wants to please, Sara says he's worried that he's the smallest in his class. Josh is so tall at two that he's nearly Jake's size. Little stir at the door and Luke and I are looking at each other. He's tall and bright-faced, not very changed. He looks the way he did when you saw him last, only bigger and more defined. If I think back to his face when he lived with me, yes he does look different, it's a different face but it's bright. He comes to give me a kiss on the cheek, formally, but it turns into a hug squeeze. He offers to show his room. The boys' bedroom. Luke's bed with two shelves over, the top one has his complex lego constructions. The shelves are ordered the way nothing else in the house is - was that for my visit or does he like it that way. The other little beds. A constellation, each child's birth sign, in luminous stars on the blue ceiling above each bed. The blue recently painted, and with white clouds, is the same blue as Luke's room in Vancouver. Presents. Luke is interested in everything - the two dollars, the Kenyan deer, the book. I gave him the big Rand McNally atlas of the universe. Sara lights up, she used to have one, she's glad to see it. Cheryl sent him some luminous decals. He likes them. I've brought him the portrait of Opa and Oma - he's interested. Presents for the little ones, things I got in Seattle, they're inspired, Jake's face when he looks at the little jointed space man, that swift little blaze of delight. There was one present left, I gave it to Sara, a Philippino toy, made of folded paper, with a wheel underneath, a snake that, when you pull the thread, darts and writhes, real snake movement, in sprigged purple paper. Shrieks and squeals. Roy comes home after work, he's thin-faced, quiet, worn out, a tall thin worn-faced man telling jokes from Reader's Digest. He has a special voice for the infant. All the kids run to greet him. They're living on welfare. He works at unadmitted jobs to save money for the farm in Portugal. It's no longer cab driving, he couldn't take it for long, now it's this and that. It's Friday night, two friends come to stay, there are bodies sleeping in every part of the children's room. I feel quiet welcome. Luke and I smile at each other from our beds across the room. I am happy. On Saturday we go to Greenwich to see the old Royal Observatory. We take a boat both ways, on the Thames from Charing Cross, look at the warehouses with names that evoke the East Indies trade route. At the observatory we stand with one foot on either side of the prime meridian. He likes the room full of clocks, their orchestrated ticks make him dance. He also likes the big telescope with a model astronomer. He tours the Cutty Sark. We take the boat back to Charing Cross and walk through Trafalgar Square, thinking to catch a bus home. There happens to be an International Women's Day demonstration on. Eight years ago Luke and I had marched in one and had our pictures taken in Trafalgar Square (the wedding dress). And there, fifteen feet away, was Annabel, Oh Annabel I'm so glad to run into you here. She looks so beautiful and so herself, tiny prickles of tears come into my eyes. I knew she was teaching out of town and it might be hard to contact her. It was raining, we took a bus back together. Talking to her I hear another kind of language, Annabel your beautiful mind. At Roy and Sara's the talk is social. The voices pose. There are real contacts but rare. The talking machines fill up silence to keep the family going. Luke does his part. Jake's suffering is going to go unhelped because his position will go unnamed. Luke's position is 'good,' ie it's one of the dominant ones, but he has it by some falseness. Sara reminisced about one of Roy's charming drunks, when he used to tapdance. Luke rebuked her, Do you want him throwing the ironing board out the window again. They have a car. Luke has wonderful expensive roller skates. Catherine buys him her idea of good clothes. They are middle-aged rather, carpet slippers, a maroon tie. She's managed to have him baptized Catholic, all the kids together, but they go to church hardly at all and don't observe the various regulations. End of the page, gives you an idea. - Paradise imagination and the guardian of the threshold. When you're almost going to meet the guardian, is when person-draws become strongest. If you get past the guardian you let yourself work in your interests because you believe them to be universally useful. You meet the guardian and it seems to be another person.
Maybe I won't go. 5 months. And set out overall for work. She's next to Ezra in the New Oxford B of Am Verse. and then becomes for himself the difficult problem he really is. the dangers of affinity more often there is no secret worth mentioning mana, the power of healing, the bull, the menstruation, fucking in a furrow my dream was made to speak to you will reveal to the doctor, in broad perspective, the whole programme of the unconscious the horse that's subject to panics When it is really a question of death the dream speaks another language. alone in a perfectly banal world, when in fact she was a child of god and should have lived the symbolic life, where she would have fulfilled the secret will in herself that was also in her family. and if anyone lives his own hypothesis to the bitter end he knows Christ is his brother. You have replaced your soul with an explanation. Then he has to go through the quest. He set out to see what the unconscious said to him and it gave him a wonderful lead. Now he leads the religious life of the careful observer. We are in a new world with that. Fantasies. That the rapport is wrong. Children born in the colonies: an atmosphere of intense fear The life of the child is contaminated by that atmosphere. She wore terrible colors to please the primitive unconscious, so it would join in when she wanted to interest a man. So far as there is an open wound there will be contamination. archetypal ideas of the magical personality the transference of impersonal contents an image in women of the stranger who comes from across the seas, meets her once and goes away The unconscious is nature and nature never lies. Jung The symbolic life: miscellaneous writings Artists often can't think because they don't intentionally use their brain. Then he knew he could rely on his imagination and learned to use it. And women sometimes do weaving. If you put yourself in the icon it will speak to you. Charged images. That's it, whether their time is over. The young girl dreamed she saw her mother hanged in a room; a horse broke through the door and crashed down from the balcony; she was going to die within a year; he heard the dreams and told the story. - Composition There's a surrounding, it's in color, the colors are next to each other in combinations that delight; single things - post, stone, house, cloud - say "I am" to me; they reflect my presence there with the camera. A field is skylight. Snow is granite. Currents blown off the edge of the drift demonstrate a galaxy's blast. Yellow and blue. Rose twilight elates. Snow particles blasted off an edge demonstrate galaxy's suspension yellow in blue. The pictures aren't worthless because they're like advertising pictures. Who likes them. What is color. Color is feeling. In a particular state. You don't know where they come from. What it says. The sheets of fire-cloud. But. Composition. Controlled view. Very controlled view. Photographers like them. If the frame isn't that
- Seattle [staying with Jean-Vi and Kathryn Lyle, visit the Cornish Institute with them, sit in the midst of music students writing what I hear] The New Pacific I like the idea of one person being the anchor and the rest trying their wings twelve wings sound recording technician / body image finder
I was just playing around with the piano the other day and I found something I never knew existed, the middle pedal (piano)
the way friends in work separately from far parts Lying down into the high platform bed went easy into sleep. Woke to know how happy I was sleeping and also thinking I was turned head north. Re-placed the pillow and got into the side of the tucked sheet. Lying on my side sweetly upslope morning light woke me. I rolled up the blind, fumbling I got the piccolo trumpet though You're going to play piano in his cloud chamber piece? to tie a knot in the cord, to hook onto the small nail, I was thinking about something, partly in presence of someplace, was it England or somewhere else. Felt, when I remembered it, get swept away by the listening experience, which is exactly right; but for the composer - it was somewhere I don't know in this sequence. The black buildings had even-colored two sides light and dark That was a beautiful canon. He lets the firebird go, protected by the firebird's feather. I thought the assignment was listening behind the music for what's happening. It was easy, The mountain opens up like this and these creatures The darkness is the low strings and the birds are brightnesses Something is suspending this in the pitch organization.
I have a lot of words come up. They're stage images. Gradual development has a lot to do with It thinned out. When I came back it was bright, shadow lace standing on the pillow standing up at the end of the bed. Black building has glare in front of all of it. Down below on the windowsill the finerib glass cone has fringeline shadows across. Two small-leaf different-leaf different green in a glass pot. Asphalt street concrete sidewalk wiremesh fence shadows comb through to 90 degree intersection with white parking lines. It's like a morning in Morocco or Spain. Stucco orange wharf façade in front of deep blue. Bamboo shade lines. Got into the band of clever and couldn't get out A wide band through the eyes down to solar plex, stopped there in a ridge and left a glow and a wired small twitchiness in back of neck, thighs. Beware the color of her eyes. What can be known made felt when the other half is present. The seeing from out there. It's a seeing or, I know it for a seeing, by a change in my own.
After the surge through the eyes I knew something, that the intense outline on the diaphragm meant it was a barrier, and I often use it. K: that her lover is a bodyworker.
Defending the unpopular instrument If I want in writing to confirm by echo, I have to know how far along it has to be to register as that. Turquoise crystal eyes, the left a stronger color along one edge of the iris
- Yesterday when were flying there was a time when the sun was setting and it was shining under the clouds. There was light under the clouds but not above them. It made a grey, a slightly pink grey, shining, under the clouds, like water. The clouds we were over were in shapes like bushes, some small bushes in rows, bigger bushes coming up, and some like just slopes, with grass. And then we came to the edge of the clouds and we flew out over the abyss. Oh - (They felt it!) The break in the clouds was in the shape of a river, a very wide river, and when we were over it down very far below I could see a real river shining faintly. I thought it might be the Grand Canyon. I thought it must be quite a strong shape to make such a clear
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