| volume 6 of up north: 1980-1981 november-july | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
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Creative strength brought from the months alone in the lake house carries me some months into the time back in Vancouver. In part 1 I'm living in Jam's house in Kits, waking early to write for an hour before going to work as a labourer on construction. Rain. Part 3 first assembly of notes in origin shown at Roy Kiyooka's studio, the Blue Mule. Parts 4 and 5 am in London visiting Luke, sick and broke sleeping in the kids' room or staying in Annabel Nicholson's flat when she's away. Visit Olivia in Oxford, and Sarah Black when she comes from Cornwall for a school reunion. In part 6, back in Vancouver, I move back into my own place on East Pender. Part 7 planting and then cooking for Brinkman Reforestation April into July: Kitwanga in the Nass Valley, Edson, Slave Lake, and a second Slave Lake site. Fall desperately in love, in the high of long northern daylight, but don't do anything about it. When we break camp for the season hitchhike to Valhalla, live a few days in the lake house for the last time. This is the last volume for which there is also a day record interleaved with ordinary journal. Writing assembled in this time includes later numbers of The play of the weather and dictionary pieces in Short poems. Notes: Edwards The Field of Stones: a Study of the Art of Shen Chou, Li Po, Arts Council of Great Britain Jack Smith, Ida May Gaskin Spiritual midwifery, Carolee Schneeman, Messiaen, The elephant man, Funk and Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary, astronomy, hemispheric specialization, Marion Milner On not being able to paint, Taylor Haven finding art, Kerenyi Eleusis, Wasson The road to Eleusis, Detienne The gardens of Adonis, Wade Acoustic imaging, James Tiptree (Alice Sheldon) Up the walls of the world, Don McCullin Homecoming, Virginia Woolf, Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove The wise wound, She moved throught the fair, Pound Selected Cantos, Leboyer, Annabel Nicholson, Jane Warrick Stories, Mechtilde von Magdebourg, Julian of Norwich, John Parkinson Paradisi in sole, Underhill The dream and the underworld, Tony Harrison, Barthes A lover's discourse, Mathiessen The snow leopard, Daniel Schmid Tosca's kiss, growing orchids, Le corridor in Harmonium L'heptade, Evangeline Walton Island of the mighty (version of the Mabinogian), Robert MacLean In a canvas tent, Tom Raworth, Blake, de Beauvoir,Sylvia Ashton-Warner. Mentioned: Jam Ismail, Andy Wyman, Katrin Zaugg, Cheryl S, Diana Kemble, Daphne Marlatt, Paul Kinsella, Jean-Vi Lenthe, Demetriou (Ted) and Ianni the builders,Arnold Dresser, Roy Kiyooka, Rhoda Rosenfeld, Trudy R, Kathryn Lyle, Don Druick, Luke, Sara Chisholm, Roy Chisholm, Jake Chisholm, Madge Herron, Janine Wyman, Lynne Bell, Olivia Howell, Chris Bayard, Michael Carmichael, Mr Hassanali, Bill Chow, Henry Brownrigg, Robert MacLean, other planters (Caludio, Bart, Brian, Jean, Bunny, Graham, Suzelle, Jabez, Gene, Mike, David, Brigitte, Danielle, Brenda, Bill, Dennis, Katy, Chantale, Chris, Jeff, Yan), Don Carmichael, Mary Epp, Helmer Dolemo, Ed Epp. 2292 W 6th Ave, 824 E Pender, Koo's Automotive, Banyan bookstore, Naam restaurant, Hornsey Lane, Coleridge School, Four Corners gallery, British Museum, Steiner bookstore, Port Meadows in Oxford, Cornish Institute in Seattle, YWCA in Edmonton, Kitwanga, Terrace, Moore Creek, the Nass River bridge, Smithers, Lake Else Motor Inn Kittimat, Edson, Slave Lake, Spring Lake, Valhalla Centre. Jane Roberts, Yeats, Grotowsky Towards a poor theatre, De Beauvoir, Richardson Pilgrimage, Lessing The marriages between zones three, four and five and The four-gated city, Taffelmusik, I'bn Arabi Book of the journey by night, Bachelard, Mary Staton From the legend of Biel, Maxine Hong Kingston at the ICA, Lessing Memoirs of a survivor, Elizabeth Lutyens, Brakhage, Ravel Music from the elements, Barber Knoxville 1915, Francis Yates, Karen Kain, My brilliant career, Rudy Wiebe, The white hotel, Dance of the blessed spirits, Raiders of the lost arc, Abdullah Ibrahim Anthem for the new nations, Francis Wahl. |
28 November 1980, Friday, Vancouver She when she went into the kitchen put her hand on a warm teapot. At breakfast, brought out ping a point and then sphere, intense to tell. "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. Another kind of syntax. 30
3 December 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, fox spirit. Follow the stroke over the rim and back. White lilies. Likes.. From above, a spotlight on brown sea, a sailboat. Mid-December [Working as the only construction laborer on a remodel site with two Greek bosses, Demetriou (Ted) and Ianni.] "You've never seen a labourer before?" Feeling the disposition of the other two. Not much but the sight of plaster and lathe. 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. December 20 Hello December rain. Not remembering what a birth sensation is like. It was not pain not sex, a wider feeling, 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, 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. 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. 24 $350. 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. At my worksite Ted's truck, piles of lathe. The day's work goes vividly in crossing one space in many ways. On the ladder knocking lathe from above. Vivid window holes. The very small nails left behind lathe. The boy is 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. "You can go home at 3:30" and dragging then. 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. 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. 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. Chopped eggs for Christmas dinner. I go to bed. - 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. 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. Water pouring. 5 January 1981 Keep waking before alarm, 3, 4, 5 o'clock. This morning walk out of the house, see other people at bus stops, into lighted rooms without persons, bag heavy from cork boots. No dawn color, it's damprot season. Jim is just arriving, is he irritated. Told to shovel mud out of corners of the excavation I'm weak and offended, he's telling me to shovel mud? It's my job. Move the shovel feebly. They build forms. I carry 2x4s, throw them through the window into the basement. The 2x6s were wet, slipped, soaked my handkerchief in my pocket. Smashed the alarm clock throwing a 2x4. They forgot my coffee break. I had to offer them something from the store when it had got hard to move. They didn't notice it was lunch time until nearly one and then left me out of theirs. Feeling of disgrace. "You can hack these 2x4s? Jeem say we should get somebody else but I think you're doing fine." I can't understand both their accents. I'm always having to repeat their orders stupidly to make sure I heard right. The lumber delivery truck backed into the trench I'd cleared. Why am I here labouring instead of somewhere being skilled. Disgrace last night. Want to leave, live alone somewhere, not be known. Going silently through the day, they don't think I'm human. I miss being addressed and being part of the plans. "You can pound some nails." Until I'm called down to throw mud against the outside of the footings. "You have boots, you do in there." He's sending me into the water? It is hard for them and me, goes against us, we act as if it's alright, that's law. Women going by on the sidewalk stare. The ugly girl behind the glass over the fence. I hate her, she's home all day with the radio on. Walking from the bus thinking about drowning and other ways of stopping. In Lessing when he went into the river. 7th Five. Lying on the floor with the light on dreaming. Tea. Peel apple, banana. Two tangerines, milk. Rilke and Tulku sentences a way of being in and talking about inside of body. Sentences seemed dead last night. I could write the sense I had with them, nearly each phrase was revelation. Go into mist, walk up wanting to look in windows, happy. They're already tearing off forms, the footings standing smooth square and steaming. Working with Th-thor-i [Ted] helping build forms, humanly directed and acknowledged. Carrying planks. Like yesterday pouring concrete using my foot to channel. Body's finding ways to unusual balances and holds, I am perched in it with pleasure. Don't have no body to call my own. My little Percy came upstairs when I sang that back.
Stems corridors. Sense in dictionary writing of the showing of inclusions / companions / glances in words, as they've been unconscious from long. Plum/p. It's freeing what's in the word. Sense of the other words loosening out.
The broken line that has pull: why. Broken line if parts come with pauses. What's wrong with the feel of it read after. Are the pauses not correct. If parts come with pauses they aren't yet correct. 19 Dark before 7. In my backroom with summer's journal quite rapt. Find the sorts of work. Felt like paradise. Typing from. She's early in the next room. Meeting in the kitchen. Whirl round, rush out and bang in the bathroom door. She brings toast. It's time to go to the library. At the bus stop we're standing for our portrait. The orange silk shirt. In the bus, the love around the two sides touching, temperature, softness of overlap.What are we talking about, so the library stop interrupts. Buy cherry jam, almonds, oat flakes, black current juice at Galloway's. Separate at the bus stop. Cheryl isn't first glad to see me. Small small. Coffee. Whiskey? She smokes hash. I see the tree's shadow on the fridge. About music. She puts on Bach cello, Ravi Shankar, koto, Vivaldi, and then something symphonic. Anxious. She has suddenly invited me to read during her show, or something else. I'm excited seeing the images. February In the history of invention - navigation - I'm feeling for the parallel without knowing, except as it was in drugs, what I want to know is how to navigate. If it's the soul to be conveyed, then it's a lifetime sequence - how to think of lifetime - the way there's history and not, stories with unknown reliability - the other sense of being here without - if I'm getting to where I see that it isn't thinking, where thoughts cancel, then I'm focusing - is it. What was I feeling in navigation history. They had first to think of directions as winds. The imaginary lines. Is it metaphor, ie nothing, to think there's a movement to learn for courage of bateau ivre. Henry the Navigator gathered students, did he know what to look for, they went to live on the far edge, thought there's something out there. For soul it would be something about death. Outer space. Is space outside identity. I know I was her and no longer am. If it's a boat that has to be conveyed - (Laing's senile poems) - then it's for caution wisdom - if it's a lifetime to try, then it's gather what's known and enter the Atlantic, home doesn't matter. Do I know - child's vow, not to be anxious - if I am the child I was given that's really not the Atlantic, it is home - if it can go into the Atlantic it's always home, or, what any ordinary person does is sail out. I've been sucking up teachings, experience extension, that I now want to leave out. Is there any adventure.
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The way I used to be when I had taken everything as far as I could but I wondered if it had been a mistake to do it with drugs because then I would have to doubt forever what I had found. Anguish of the solar plex. What's the anguish. A brightness. To know you I have to find in myself very exactly the one who knows you. - It's Tuesday, February. What's been questioning. The answer I got now was: closest attention. As when the question was what's wrong, is something wrong. In this sense of balancing what am I missing - her. A long time without bright fire noticing. No it's different. The two nights in the right quiet. It is complacent. Is it. Is there such a question. About show. Writing and photographs. I thought today, a film about writing and photographs.
Her finest attention When I had told her the balance and the suspicion that it can balance because I'm not very sensitive my lower belly had come into fire. She said hers was cold and swirling. "It could be called cold but it's quite still and as if radiating in its dish in the abdomen." Why are you burning my left side. "You'll have to go to your own bed now, Miss."
The fine steady glow. - With persons. Again remember. To know anything, have to assume nothing and work. I find the other in me. Is it easy or hard. As understanding, hard. [first outline for notes in origin the multimedia show, sound edit notes] Feb 24 [first showing of notes in origin in Roy Kiyooka's studio-gallery on Powell, Jean-Vi and Kathryn come from Seattle and stay with us] Going to the show, on Hastings at the bus stop, Chinese evening dress through the street lights. Are they going to a wedding party. She looks straight and glossy in her black jacket. On my right, the rose color petals spilled across the threshold of my work room. Giddy, possessed gladly by a goddess. I'm badly dressed and tired but it doesn't matter. Don to Roy "I'll do it, you go back to ---," in a voice like family efficiency. Kathryn on her knees fixed the sound by moving the cord. On a chair eating wormy noodles out of styrofoam with small Japanese chopsticks. "It said you weren't available. I loved that." People begin to fill the room. Kim's friend startling us both. Franches-ka. "Really?" we say and it's not what it seems. Know the sequence for the machines. Turn on the tape recorder and it's a while, then "The grass is luminous" in an amplified quiet voice. Ah the voice isn't going to be wrong. I don't see how they see the pictures but I hear how they are hearing the voice. Corrall that private word. Many small parts. "Your mother's dresser, that moved me." When we'd gone excited to bed and couldn't sleep. The pronoun and marveling at what she may think I did. The whole dark room, heads bent over onto chests. The quiet. "I've never seen a reading where people were so curled over, like flowers." J-V in a dark stretch toward the bus. Not liking the applause. March, London [Roy lends me a job looking after a very old woman for a day.]
16 March Luke 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. She's 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 but not the edges. A village and theatre school. Her accent would shift. I murmur any nonsense, not knowing why. But it's listening to the voices or commenting on them. 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, 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. [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 - 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. What a strong face. Isolating the face, wanting to stay in front looking at the face. 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. "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." "She's reading it aloud, a half hour a day." [her mother] "They read it very recently, two weeks ago. My father stayed up all night to read it." 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, cheeks sore from nose blowing, nose skin raw, streaming. Jake drugged, Josh coughing. 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 the ICA with heavy shoulder bag, sleeping bag getting wet, Sara's scarf. The man in a doorway leaning out, a good face. He seems to be weaving. He's looking at me as if he's going to ask for money. I am already angry about the cost of buses and how I can't go anywhere. "You must be kidding" I shout over the noise of a motor. He calls me back, "American!" Begins to say something. I'm 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 brown and half the size of the other, it's fascinating. 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. 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. In this sickness and poverty being brutal. 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." - [I take Luke to see Olivia, her husband Chris Bayard and her son Michael in Oxford] She is speaking in a voice more like her old granny's . She's feeling the years, I'm not. 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. 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. When she was asking at the end, I knew I was resisting and knew it was right to. I would not, will not, open up to the hideousness. They say that would change her. 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. "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. Winebrown silver I can still see. I can see the river meadows flooded, turf grass mix with feather leaf, daisies. Don's green slime poured out [she said]. She's the kind of person flies buzz around. Thinking: is this suitable to her, was she always this. 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. - [I visit Luke's class] Mr Hassanali's jumbled classroom. He said Luke has worked everything out.What does he like best. Reading. "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." - In the tube, on the street, clear appearances of many different people. Many are felt. 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. Saying yes to taking pictures of the Lego. 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. Thighs shine. These thighs are bright from inside. The backs of my hands are bright. - [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, the sun heat at 134 bus stop. 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. Luke concentrates with the camera. We finish them before Sara and Roy come home with Jed in orange pants and the proud big cheese. When I go home oh Luke's long hug. Crying with Janine at the story of Eliot's birth and pain. - Yesterday when we 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. 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 Vancouver April 8 [back in 820A East Pender]
- What I'm getting from notes today and have been looking for is the instruction complexity - that is all the vocabularies I like - sorts of writing I know - messages as from others - as from inward event, place - personal story - sorts of scruple - experiment - what's noticed and unconscious April 14
- The similarity of meaning of different kinds of events. Lying in bed in the morning: it does mean there's one material of things and thoughts - one material: I've been working on seeing that way - the times there have been, working on seeing that way - An inner dialogue - that another knowledge with its other brain or - there's another knowledge not as voice but picture and so on. - When I lay down with my back to her there was a feeling I wanted to listen to, in my abdomen and even in the small of the back where it was nearest her. I thought she was feeling it too, feeling as some active sense down in the abdomen watching intensely on the surface of the sensation. I thought she was feeling and when she disconnected I turned over to look at her. It was a shrunk face in a circle of loose skin, strange, and if I could be near my instant, touching. That was her not sensing what I think of as the field. What does she do instead. We seem not to be able to do anything but look. She says, What do you see. I can't say: I see it, that face in some way it's never been. We don't understand each other. I go down into my bed the minute she's gone, to revenge myself, and erase what might be a hunger bond. My breasts are that cool almost immaterial soft at the tips, but I can make so little of their feeling. It's without dreaming or real joy. But when it flushes it hits a last knob that's almost from the deep. Then the whole abdomen seems to be whited and my mouth, I'm not sure, becomes less crimped. The shoulder under the shirt. Oh.
I think I can't speak right to what I know at parties because I'm holding a wide outward. - Then a lonely misery making myself come and lying down under the lightbulb to sleep. The phone when it rang wasn't the right person. All night under the lightbulb. It was full moon? In the morning the bright sun and the lightbulb. Not wanting to wake to nothing to do. Then the wonderful morning and working in the garden but after a while felt it mania. Money is $5 for the next 5 days. The dissolve and salt piece. In the sadnesses what I go to, once yesterday, once today, is you've wanted to be gone for a long time, you've seen me through to being able to go on to something else. But there's whine in that formation, not whine, some round the back coercion because it covers a howl, why wasn't I what you really wanted. Then I think of the open heart time when we were testing whether maybe and I get to the pair: you're what I wanted really although it wasn't quite right for you either in your fantasy or your real necessity, and I've been running after you; versus you are too stiff for me and how you live doesn't interest me, I'd like to be with a freer heart. What it means is can I, is it time to, do I want to, lie down with, somebody. But never to be as with you again - it's wanting to know what can't be known, whether it could be as with you again. Because if it can't, I do know. I'm ready to go on, but if it can I'll wisely wait. - Cat singing oh-l-l-lay-eh in a human voice, in the rain. 23 April The bluntface Chinese man from the welfare office - Bill Chow. We were standing on the circle inside the garden, I was eagerly telling him about it, breaking off little ends of herb. He came upstairs and down again continually smelling them bruised together in his palm. Stood beside the wallflowers saying again, It's a wonderful day, in his dark blue nylon ski jacket. His eyes were afraid of me. The warm blissful sun. 27 Waking early in pain. An opening of fear under death, Jam, that we are separate, and swarming cockroaches. That we are separate, the different destinies, I felt it. [C] The ego dies because it can't keep up. But something goes on perceiving? And then the ego comes back to look after things. The fur on her face. Cold powerful blade of her nose. Whiskey without sense of drunkenness and waking this morning in a soft body. My fantasy companions, when I'd come gold leaf skin from thighs up to the chin I gave them each a thankyou kiss goodbye. A sweet round penis nosing at three levels. "I've seen her in my neighbourhood, she looks like a spirit." - My goddesses in their adjustments that look like failures, will I see the way through. - At the corner in front of the hotel on Keefer a prostitute stepped out of a taxi. She stood near the other girl on the corner in a fawn suit with the jacket hem slightly turned up across her back, black toeless small shoes; under her black hat, glasses, red lips in a white face. She stood slightly leaning on her umbrella bowing to look into cars, sometimes quite a deep bow toward a low car, an odd courtly industrious working in the focus of held stares from all of us, Chinese men and women, waiting for the bus with bags of shopping. When I looked at the line of nylon at her ankles, and the panty line under her skirt, I thought of her sex wet from the man she'd left when she got the taxi. A big man with his hands in his pockets said, standing sideways to her so she had to turn from the curb - I read his lips - "How much?" - Looking at J sometimes the alert forwardness of the pretty color in her mouth, other times a distance seeing what a strange wild emperor. - Watched from above, my neighbour opened a pit on either side of the two lines of peas. Brought 2 plastic shopping bags full of shrimp heads. Poured and shoved them into the trenches. Bone meal from the pail. Began to refill the trenches. She was showing her daughter, laughing, how someone else does something, two tottering steps and a little jump. Opened the space between the two rows with the hoe, hilled dirt up alongside the pea stems. Her daughter began to shove in the stakes at angles crossing each other. The shrimps completely buried, a yellow tape to hold the peavines toward the stakes. T said what I'd told Paul: "This must be heaven for them, that's why it feels the way it does here." May 3 Somewhere recognizing in the dark with someone maybe a story, the right mind, it's dark multiple leafy happy (wide). The way this work is dangerous. When one's making vision there are immersions to try something, try and find something. You leave your broad view. "That a presence might come through." May 5 With C, Daphne, Max. Daphne says "He isn't whole you know, he's gimpy, he ...." The way it goes forward as if I'm watching and can't intervene, conversation = two levels. Somebody talks in response and the other watches both and knows the other person is the same. The person at the front is an instrument of the watcher, also a betrayal of the watcher, because it exists as system with the front of the other person. In relation to the division there's despair or work.
The young man in the library, stinking from a distance, tearing pages out of an emphatic little notebook, muttering Fucking ..., curses. Dirty red hair, a big large-eyed strong face. A drug crazy. Between the filing shelves I was muttering chat to myself.There has been a sensation, in this past while, as of erased traces. It is when I think of what I found and built on, from 25? to 30? Something in Lessing - her view especially of the young person resolving not to forget. - When I think of some of my bases of that earlier time they feel as if they have faded: there is a trace but a trace like a faint line on a wiring diagram. They don't support. What is supporting me now I think is the idea of accuracy. - I liked saying and listening to whatever came. I must have that again, I can't with her because she persecutes me about men. That only leaves therapy. - A purple shirt and very fine chain, large more delicate head. How is it today, late banana apple orange pieces in milk, in the metal bowl. Had to write a letter to 'you' and in writing it felt I'd found something apart from it, a change in the level of interest. When I begin those letters I've been restarting 6, 7, 8 times. [T about Daphne] "You're envious she can do that." "Yes I am but she's envious of me too." "Why?" "Because I don't do that." "Yes." With C easily saying where I'd been and she could too. Someone of the old women in the movie saying "I wish you would praise me from your heart, I would blossom out." It was a rapid quite accurately flowing day. I looked at him as I wanted because he's a beautiful boy kid with a beautiful listening head. In blue jeans green teeshirt white sneakers a long blond pony tail, hair crested over his face, an alert nose. - In the pizza café I told her "You want to divorce me because I can't have a baby with you." Her sad shoulders. "There's some truth in that." "Every wife you would ever have you would divorce for childlessness." Little tears. 21 Airport streets. In front of the little machines running in front of the window - very far on the grass in front of the sea. "Would you like to read something." "Oh, yes." "You've found something. A movement." She leaves me at the barrier, sloped shoulders in the grey padded jacket. You're quite old already. 26 May, Kitwanga To plant more and give up the social distance. People who are not artists, they just live. In city life I must be more as my friends are, conscious. The ones who are good at this have no special presence. Today I joined - wondered why is Henry so beautiful. Oh my, not only him, they become beautiful riding in the truck and this morning the lap and how the arm went gradually, no, the arm went timidly slowly sweetly and consciously almost behind. This is the other life that will balance the witch life but. I was somewhere alone, I was alone listening, looking, and will be again, and what else. Attention - Jamila as she was there, envious of how she was odd and loved. 28 We'd overslept and there was time to eat enough French toast and put coffee in the bottle. Pink in the sky through plastic. The white range and the moon! Full moon flew up and then across and along in fine swooping curves. And retrograde down behind the trees. Entire range glazed white and Brian said the standing wisps are called banners. Dropping bags and running downslope in white clothes already lighter, lying over a log legs hanging pumping water with mouth from surface above flowing green lines and amber over cedar water. Jean's smile brownie beret look of a dry fresh old man or woman, ancestor, blue gaze, red cheeks, small farmer, village, grandparent, sharp, careful, good, shrewd, a smile set and held. And how does Henry look: there's something delicate in his trunk, it's quite beautiful now, the whole body, slight in the belly, straight, nice indent at the knee, I stare, it is a lovely body, and the whole warmth of the eyes and face. Black on white skin turned red-brown, white eyes and it isn't an intelligent or penetrating look, it's a warm pour, it's goodness and the way it is in movement herding everyone, with strongest love for certain men, a good boy, but it's making him beautiful. I suspect the innocence but no one else is physically generous like that. In ovulation - I think it was yesterday - I wanted him to look after me - cuddle - now I think it's over. What else - body you are my dear friend - dear back you are perfectly strong - the sun was food - thank you water - keep on till the last moment though slightly faint - jump in the back. "Did your magic dibble take over?" Brian leaning his head back into the wind sitting on the gas barrel. Bart's glow. Caludio when I said the sun feeds me said he thinks that too, standing in socks on one leg shaking head in the air current. The mountain wall north-south straight line to the west white, glaze shows it's been hot, "baked snow." Sauna. Nicely ask not to talk. Able to sit pouring. Skin forming water drops, they weigh heavier and roll. The heat under padded straps. Flies around eyes and a puff under the left one. Knees feet elbow wrists bruised inside. When I close my eyes I see down a long red bore into the ground. What is it - realized it was the dibble hole enlarged hallucinated or is it a shock unfelt, gazing down into the damp red flesh greasy earth. 29 Overcast, close, small flies crawling over the eyes and cheeks, eyelids, left side of face swollen [deerflies and noseeums], stiff thick earlobe, spacing badly, planting desperately. Looking at the small flies at lunch thinking what are they what are they for. A disoriented fraction, being in their speed, crazy movement. The men's unbearable conversations with each other I assist at. Lying in the sauna leg and snatch there to see, Schamstellen. Look at what I have to work with - it contracts me, it contracts me repeatedly. Graham pale eyes massive gentle man-man put his big hand on my shoulder driving home. He looks. Perhaps he knows how. His silence. I'd be the prey I am easily now. 5 June [In Vancouver on a break between contracts] Am at last able to phone - "Are you busy later?" - "Are you in town?" in a voice with a dry fire blown horizontally through. She is she is glad and will soon come. I lie down and nearly sleep. Wake suddenly with an excitement thinking I hear her. The specific joy doesn't come until then, and soon after I hear steps on the sidewalk two stories down. Will wait with my eyes closed. Ezra's lick and I don't know what this person looks like I'll trust I'll venture. Takes off shoes. Lies down touching a little. Then the nights I don't remember to distinguish. "I'll be your family, lend you money." "Will you ask what it's for?" "No of course not." Han Suyin. Saw him at a party, asked him to make a woman of her and he did. She soon after that went to China.
Edson Now here in the headlights: the orangelit soft gravelly roadside dirt and remarkable green wideopen dusk flush, the orange powder dust rising, poplar country of my home, Sunday night church summer evening west through the high windows, a pickup passes, dust round clouds float up. Dear J, tonight I'm sleeping in Alberta. I was driving Brian's van on a gravel road with 4 tracks, it was home, the color of the ground in the headlights, green in the ditch, that green. I thank you most for having seen it, that you lived there with me - oh Valhalla house - the flush of dusk in the northwest, it's June the high season. Cold in the tent, candle on the suitcase. June 7 [Am camp cook now rather than planter.] A confused passage in the afternoon, maybe hunger. Now the camp's lively. The bread was good. The cook is distraite, others play. It'll be more expansive. June 9 Lying down at 9, visions and sensings, birds. Interrupted confident sleep. June 15 Edmonton [between contracts] Immaculate / Cauldron, talking and crackling The dance of the blessed spirits comes over the loudspeaker at the Hungarian restaurant. They're assembled, Suzelle, Jabez, Robert, Caludio, Sue, Bunny, Jean, Gene, Brian, Brigitte. Wine. Safeway, the bus being loaded. NADP loading butter. Produce wholesalers. Theatre, Raiders of the lost ark. "The music was terrible!" Bedding in the bus, on piles of stuff. They're with heads near, in sleeping bags. Motel breakfast. The motel room, Suzelle and Jabez are making it. In the other bed with Robert on his back, clicking TV, E twitching. They're sleeping all day. Evening he formally invites. Quoting. She lies down. In bed he bumps her. They sleep well. Streets of Slave Lake, glimpses of the free ones. Helicopter with nets, stoves, tanks, baggage. Setting up a cookshack, digging a pit. Caterpillars falling. The tents and arrangements, gear, machines. In Edmonton the beautiful girl in the mirror. Long mirror on the back of the closet door [in the YWCA]. I love to look at that developed dark head. Purple shirt, the Edmonton sweater, shape of the jeans, swift. Body is full of love, excitement. Am I dying is this killing me, participating, does it open the way forever to what had, kept out, kept the delicacy. Oh. This is the right state of body, it's always in love and yearning, anyone not repelling, 13. Not the person but the bodies, wanting to touch, and touching, that's the way it would be truthfully endless, curiosity, heat, and trying it out. The Mabinogian - Mab is another fairy queen. On the sand track meeting a longhaired girl, brown, silvery, wavy. I look back remembering I've seen her. She's the courtesan. Beside the bank a fox animal I stop to see, black and white on the red feral. The cauldron boiling speaks. "What is it saying?" An eruption, explosion. Back off. Wake on backfiring shots from bus motor, bodies thrown horizontal up and dropped. The cauldron was the fox. (Arriving at Slave Lake, early morning, motel parking lot.) Come in one-eyed and seek through the silk. took him to the sea and baptised him Here at last is my desire, sleeping under my hand.
Through water to their knees.
mother of fire and crops mutual in one another's love and wrath all renewing travelling up and down as a stranger in the earth, which way the lord inclined my heart. dared not stay long in any place, lest, being a tender young man, I should be hurt by conversing with - fed one another with words, but trampled upon the life June 18 It was a free zone, the excitement of this moon. Last night I saw a head, face, smiling toward me. I shut it out instantly, with a slam in the belly. Today working in the cookshack, early afternoon, I felt myself close to somewhere else, does that else tell, it doesn't seem to be mine, it's moon and near solstice, we're in a transparent room, thought I heard a bear's snuff. Suzelle and Bunny at the washbasins talking, she has her pants down to her knees, and after a while reaches between with the washcloth. Working, the time was faster than I thought. At the speedy end of the last contract I noticed there was much more time than I thought. [two pages of menu ideas] June 22 What I am is obscene because I'm disqualified. Déformée. Red shirt. Frame. Attaching a longing.
June 23
This morning golden, warm, music, a giddy high, playing; this afternoon pushing to finish details. The best blessing was the face shining, coming back. I liked finding the image for him: he's a naked bird in a tree, with those big eyes. The flown one with a little harp. Euridyce and anyway I still won't be drawn will I, to really give or show slowly in fright. Oh I will.
I'm going to write during the day.
[Le corridor in Harmonium L'heptade 1976 CBS Disques] Want to say something about the joy - today in the kitchen Brigitte and I, sitting at the table reading listening to the earphones euphoric in a daydream. I am full of love. Mild warm full alit. Ordinary. Brian I look at you and see my state. The quick of Brian. One motion on the shoulder blades, a sound. The state of love without methodology, Brigitte's pretty face, it is not speaking much to itself, it's seeing intensely, this morning we outlined dinner so we'd have time. Working on your lines, felt, imagined. I was frightened out of my mind to be arriving at [his tent] door, going crazily, stupidly, what is the expression - when it's not alert - animal realm - sniffing forward on the detail, not daring to look before speaking, I am not clear. In other places it's clear. Part of it's an intention. It sets itself. -
- "You look like a soul." You look so beautiful, always know where you are, in intense conflict, now I'll see it - in an intense conflict, the love is a joy, it turns quickly to rage, carelessly assault a victim, pleased to be unfair and mean, and so a tree got it: because I'm full of love and cannot satisfy it. And what that love is: familiar form, fright and enjoy it crudely, the high and daydream are simple joy, those mornings, in the rest of the connections it's letting out, as fast crude surprising as I can: and this one is a puzzle. You look like someone I was, or should be. And because I don't look like anyone, I'm foolish toward you, and know it's wrong, and want something, and refuse to (in danger of a bear) show, and show, and am ashamed, and moon in untestable daydreams. There's a cry, one animal, maybe moose, going away from here. (Wolf.) Robert: it isn't you, I don't know if it's you. I wait for you to come in in the morning, the most important - this language is wrong, there's a language - no, it's 'them' - Begin, again: it is embarrassing to say this even here, but it could be description. In the morning I would get up and look at your tent you set up flanking mine at a distance. Brigitte and water kettles, one morning you were there already - I have to take it seriously, somewhere - that's the first - the gaze is joy, being in the same room is necessary - but why - joy and pain in the presence of - speaking isn't necessary - being in the same room, somewhere nearby, is essential, as soon as you leave I no longer want to be there - not to say what the you is - not for your person - being in love without consent, alright I won't deny it, I am in the state of being in love with Robert, and fighting it badly, it has nothing to do with J, fights in the phrases of he thinks I'm old, and I'm lame - but I'm beautiful - following Brigitte with his eyes, it crashed me to see how he is when he likes someone - but he's doing something, enchanting me, with the yellow cap, Alaska and the stars of the Dipper, red shirt, brown shoulders, boots, sneakers, rolled jeans, I can see what's wrong with you and how you work, unworthily, to build image, it isn't the image it's your shine, lightly, you are happy too, do you know there's a conjunction am I alone in it. She said you're never alone in it, kissing, the hot melt, but won't, and then - this - also - is transcribing occurrence - I could do it right? That would be - truthfully - hug - I watched you go to work, stood at the road - long way off, cap, bags, you turned, I stepped behind a bush, was it too far to see, embarrassed for the rest of the day, to have been seen so pathetic - pathetic because I'm not equally desired - the protest that rises up when I say this - refusing - that's where I have to clear it. Isn't it an ignorant state, what does it want - babies - or fusions - for whom, and if refused, what's the loss - oh - it had been clear for some days, we were shining at each other - I look wanting to adore, at the same time marveling - what's this, is it really special to me, an artificial excitement - fantasy the quality of helplessness - it's helplessness because I can't do what's required and that's simply and gladly adore and study . Mosquito coil snake across the table in front, two candles on the suitcase. There was so much else but if you went out of sight it was no good. Hot sun, we all sat on the slope in front of the helicopter pad, vivid, intensely known persons, you in any of your postures, movements in what felt to be grace and balance, although I'd stumble, expressing my liveliness, and then unbuttoning the shirt to the waist, lying back, a state of hoping to be watched. Flurry. It's no good. I'm so hot, here, among whatever chemicals must be in such intense concentration - is that what they mean 'germs'. Why's he the one nature sics me on. It's mistaken and it's a beautiful intensification. We're going to get through without doing it. Was it the motel bed, no, sooner, from the supermarket on. - No, back from dream [of the courtesan]. Careless taking pictures - doing it better would help - some strict work . He's sly too. "Skinny and ugly." July 1 I refused the one, turned and walked simply into the other's arms. This was a morning dream in the new moon sadness. Showing dejection hiding away strategically but there was a moment I didn't see coming, doorway crash of gazes, the one said I see you, the other, it's hopeless go away I'm mad at you, and ducked right with a chagrinned mouth. July 3 They were saying the food was good, light. The pleasure of these days - this is where I felt liveliness - is in the movements in the room and outside - lifting the big cauldrons throwing a pan of water reaching to open the oven - the movements seem wide balances of the whole body, from the moccasins up, among the many persons whose positions I also feel. Yesterday morning at the stove, staying at the stove, still withdrawn, music from the tape machine by the door, I remembered I could make a dancer, I had my eyes open but was seeing the dancer's arms and hands, legs, sometimes parts like the knee, or the whole body. I was making it and watching it, interiorly I was dancing it, and at the same time I was noticing how complete and visible a rapture it put me in, as seen from there, a powerful reversal, I felt it, didn't look to see if watched, it seemed a showing off and I loved to do it : was there an attention already added to mine. When you want someone to love you, pull inward. Straw hair around eyes, light bones, looking out from his face's nest. - Anger and sorrow from Slave Lake again - I'll read this he said kindly noticing my eyes' distress when he seemed to be putting away the envelope - the incredulity behind, why am I having to fight this way to be seen - the answer is that it's his. Quoting the poets, he says he has lost it, the child surfaces in déjà vu, by a tunnel, the tunneling was to survey the life, whether it is going to be what he longs for - at 17 he fasted, he says, for 30 days - there was a spiritual stature in that to impress us all. They gathered around the table, Henry and Brian - I knew my position was wrong, but I had to speak and learn - without generosity the marvelous possibility would be wasted - and to be speaking to him - he was being adored - Brian said "You're one of the high ones" and brought the red blanket after my teeth chattered. What he enchants with: Nepal, turquoise, the flute, color, taking off his shirt, his eyes. "One time when I was meditating a skunk came onto my lap, and a porcupine." I didn't know if it was true but I had a real story, the joy laugh I heard and when I said "You're the only person I ever met who's kept a journal longer than I have" not necessarily believing he'd had it since he was seven and Beethoven at three - outraged between knowing I'm at least his match, and it unacknowledged, why - marveling - he builds his image and doesn't see - makes himself taller than he is, pretty shoulders, the Alaska hat with [sketch of the Great Bear] blue on yellow. Valhalla, the lake house, 8 July Clear yellow moon in the clean half pointing northwest. It is bright in light blue. O dear color. I don't think you won't come to see me: Oh eyes I have to be in front of you. Bitter. July 10
- Now it has come to a quiet seeking in the detail, instead of philosophy I have a slight sense of refusal: that isn't worth thinking. Being in the middle, definitely being, without knowing. 'Simplicity.' I like simplicity and the sense of balance in a completely built vision. I was speaking to my first class. Does someone love me at home. Without a light heart it can't be done.
I refused the one, turned and walked simply into the other's arms to listen; to look at birds Come from the tent to the cookshack, many people inside cooking. Is he here, yes. I hang around, he sits at the table. Brenda's talking to him. I sit with them, with my tea. When I can, I ask him something. He stays to talk. Brian and Henry come. I won't let them in, this is with you. It is you who leaves it. My teeth chatter. Brian brings the red blanket. I think he says it's Robert's. I put my nose into it. Graham has begun to take down the tarps. He is up on the poles. I go outside to see how he looks. Come and go packing whatever I think of. Danielle washing pots. It rains briefly. We're hanging around the tarp. Brenda goes to sleep. The night before was a fire I woke and came back to, walked once around. Dennis offered the bottle and a spot. The checker's folded-lip smile. Suzelle and Jabez. Caludio uncontrollably singing Mexican songs. Gene knows silly lyrics to known songs. David wants to sing old ugly ones. Suzelle hovering with Jabez a last evening. Sue has Mike to massage. David puts his hand on the back of my neck, I look stiffly the other way. Henry notices. The checker wants hymns. Twice through The circle's chorus. Brian singing on the other side of the circle. John hunched in shorts is the one who wants to be near me, Graham for a while. Is it getting darker. Ignorant talk about the stars. The Summer Triangle. Vega Altair Cygnus. He's in bed away from our vulgarity. Is he sleeping. Do I want to sing that, a confused round we never learn. I stay until only a few are left. Want to sleep so little. They're saying the sky is lighter. They dig through the boxes looking for food. I know to tell them to try the other pile, French bread. Go up the road, looking for him, no, but to be closer and then shocked and ashamed to see him lying on his gear right at the road. I go by miserably devouring the bread, looking somewhere else, to my spot on the rise. I'll meditate. Take off my shirt. The fine heat, flies. Listen to the flies' dotted lines on my breasts, is it the form of lovemaking I can have today. Listening to the grass behind, for a visit.
Stow it, and get my suitcase back. Sit by the road. Graham in the back of the bus in an armchair. The pink fireweed and the other pink/yellow small flower, in grass, it's paradise color, I look at it from the bus seat, but want, dream, am intensely hallucinating, your gaze, conversations. I want to look at myself in the bus mirror, beautiful, in the yellow raincoat I think I'm you, briefly in the yellow Alaska hat. I want to be seen but not looking at myself. A long wait, I can see the yellow from you, sitting crosslegged in the ditch, on the grass stems. You sit in front of my eyes. Danielle sits next to you. Next glance Bunny has squeezed between you and is talking to you. Your enemy's courting you. Mine throws me glances, I won't answer. Sue builds a fire. Two sparks on my Andre Mitchel jeans. When Chantale asks about my film you move closer. Le message c'est de bien voir, et de bien écouter. Did you want to hear that. At the mudhole we're to walk through, the blue 4x4 sticks, is pushed back, Graham at the side excellently pushing, I'm smiling admiring how men push trucks in mudholes. It sticks again, they'll winch it, from far back out of the way of a snapped cable I see Gene in the road dart down and dance sideways with the cable. "Look at Gene!" Gene's lumberjack skill. He's listening and to the right. And was watching just before when Gene and I met up in the long grass chewing grass ends, jousted with them in our mouths. He said I was really a sweetheart and I said he was too and slapped his face with a sideways movement of my head, the plume of the grass stalk. He and Henry watching jealously to see who I love but without offering me anything. Comical politics of attraction continue. From one of the mudholes keep walking. Suzelle, Chantale, Chris, through burnt forest, shining pine seedlings, greasy pooled water, overcast luminous plantlife. We keep walking until we're emerged at the gravel pit where the vehicles are parked. Yan writing checks. R walking around, playing with the red dog. Now we're sorting to go to the motel. R with Sue. I've taken a ride with Allen. Do we alternate avoiding each other. I don't bunk with them but I still hope to end up - In the morning they tumble out their door, why do they look like that, and go to breakfast. I want to look at no one else. In the café am allowed one little more time, talking fast, oddly, competing, indignant, and I shoulder my bag and go down the road, stop the first car. You're behind me, hope you miss saying goodbye. Slave Lake fields woods the lake, rapidly leaving them all thus easily sadly fleetly up the unfamiliar road, friendly to the stranger drivers, windy corners, the blue scarf around my head, a corner I know from that trip to Hines Creek, the clover ditches, past Peoria, Teepee Creek Road, walk from La Glace, delicious air, gravel hurts through the moccasins, and to Epp's empty house, still full of your image, wanting to tell the story, sleeping a little, restless. - It's funny how whiskey jacks will tame up right away. Roland Kranz, I get so mad at him, every groundhog he sees he has to kill it. He was in my place one night two, three, years ago, he give me that. Bill was a little bit on the simple side. I sure like this truck, how biga motor have you got. [Helmer talking to my dad at Spring Lake, Sunday afternoon] There was a clear sky above the dead sea. I'd had the flu so I couldn't go up the Mount Masada, that's a famous mountain in history. - Thunder thumped the house, I felt it under my foot from the kitchen, where the floor seemed to have more contact. Knallen. The spruce branches - when I looked at them they aren't spruce they're those many winged trees in a row, dark. Blue fill from beyond the candle, a flash I didn't look up to see. Hiss in minute parts, rising volume, round leaves, needles. Another blue flash, just after it the candle flapped, a roll over the roof north to south. The sea of sound. Looking at my face, a blue flash left of it from where I look out, my face I love. The fly's deep something like one rub sound from stumbling into the flame, falling onto the stove. The smell of earth has come. Look at the shine out of the brown skin on the back of my wrist. I'd love her, look at her eyes and shapely hair.
It's full moon, ate until my midriff was stiff. Hello mouse. Driving mindless after the phone call, complex west levels openings overlaid open and close arches of clouds dark and light blue - what I had to notice was that I'm eager to tell her my attachment. From upstairs down onto the strawberry bed, squirrel picked off a green strawberry, held it in forepaws, ground through it like a little grinder, ran under the big leaves examining the stems, none big enough. [recipes for baked custard, fudge, macaroni cheese, cookies, bulgar bean salad, chili, cornbread, coconut curry, eggplant spaghetti, spinach pudding, peanut stew, eggplant and mushroom pie, carrot bread, sweet and sour beet-carrot salad, cheesecake filling, apple cake, Yorkshire pudding, Lebanese black bean soup, Tibetan noodle soup, Yogi tea, bubbly mead]
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