the golden west volume 11 part 4 - 1997 august-september

work & days: a lifetime journal project

Wednesday 10th On Monday I woke at quarter past five, made tea, collected stuff, and got out onto Clark Drive in the dark. By the time I was crossing the Knight Street bridge there was light on the eastern rim, that grew to incandescent orange as I shot through Surrey on a nearly empty road. There were solid architectures of mist above wet spots in the fields. I was elated, driving fast. When I got to the border the sun was up so that, in the countryside past Blaine, I would drive into blinding zones of solid light where mist extended across the road. Everything beautiful. Weeds, grass, bushes, trees. At the last bridge into Bellingham two deer crossed the road. The town still asleep, but not the mission: men on the steps, smokers on the sidewalk. I pull into the lower parking lot and park next to your window: a perfect journey, comic destination, There's your head stuck out the window rumpled and surprised. A kiss. Your always wonderful firm manly mouth. This and that. We pay the traffic ticket. Cook breakfast at a dewy picnic table between the creek and a City Hall parking lot. It takes us a long time to get focused. This time we're doing it your way not mine, physically not psychologically. Running around. A long ride on the bikes - a bridle path, a bridal path, a woodland ride, arched over by small trees. I could like it, I'm thinking, if I were not so pressured to like it. But the pressure I'm feeling is tremendous and this ride is really very long. Tom stops to tell me what I'll see next, and how wonderful it will be. Shut up and let me see it for myself, I don't say. When there are stairs on the path he carries my bike but I'm weak on hills and I don't like that. We arrive at his pool, which is a nice shallow bit of stream with clear water, brown stones, mossed boulders and staunch maples. I'm still annoyed by what I feel as pressure to enjoy. I'm struggling. Stare at the water. After a while I see the reflection upside down of a couple of maples rising parallel from the same root - that is, what I see is toned-together shades of grey-violet and blue-green. It occurs to me to think maybe I have been feeling him, not myself - maybe what I feel as pressure to enjoy is his great hunger to have given me something I like. Immediately I'm turned around. What a sweetie. I go put my arms around him. Thank you monsieur. Thank you monsieur. But then being thanked makes him want to grope me and I don't think I'm interested. He says what he imagines when we live together is getting fine-tuned sexually and making love every night. Here I am sexually uninterested but immediately happy at the thought of making love every night. What should I make of that? We ride back into town. Drink chai in our community art gallery sofa. I'm having a little nap on his shoulder. He's having a fit of remorse at having worn me out. We drive out to the marsh on the rez. It's suppertime. A good time to arrive after the day's heat. The season is three weeks on. The meadow is a different color. Yarrow heads are brown. Drifts of asters. The sticky yellow burr is in bright first flower. No martins, but loud geese out of sight on the tide side of the dyke. We'll sit around for a while and then have supper. A large top-heavy woman with bleached hair and a rose tattoo drives up with a canoe on her old camper pickup. She wants us to move the car so she can get to the water. I'm interested in her but don't follow it up because I'm deferring to Tom's attitude which is that she's ugly and aggressive. We go sit on the other side of the dyke until she paddles back from wherever she went. What did we talk about, sitting on rocks padded with piles of what looks like cassette tape - dunno. Made a kitchen counter with plywood over two logs. Campstove, cooler, gas can full of water, pots and pans. This is crude cooking, I say. Nothing you do is crude, sez T. I narrow my eyes. I'm watching the way he tells me whatever I want to hear. One day he's going to trust me not to have to have that, and then he'll be more interesting to both of us. (Another thing I noticed through our two days is the way I am always correcting him. I will be more interesting to both of us when I trust the facts to look after themselves and do something different in those times. Yeah.) The sun goes down while we're eating. T has his second plate of spaghetti on the west side of the dyke with me. Pink clouds and yellow sky reflected on the water. We watch the incandescence change. He used to see such things, he says, but he wouldn't sit and watch them like this. Not since he was very young. That's such good news, I say. We hear the geese. There are a few street lights in the Lummi village across the water. The moon is at the waxing half and is standing at the zenith, above the dyke road that divides right from left. Behind us, in the east, it is settled night and nontidal water. In front of us in the west, it's wet deep color, water peaceable but changing, squawking flocks, mother owl roaming. I'm looking back and forth from one time of day to another, an illusion I love. We go back to the night world and crawl into bed. Our dew cover is already wet. Tom is wearing jeans, socks and his big jacket. I have folded my pants and put them under the mattress. Also my shoes with the keys in them. The Milky Way is directly overhead. Tom needs to play with the radio. I'm in a secret frenzy of anxiety when he does but I keep my mouth shut and use his absence to look around and try to listen. I apologize to the spirit of the place for him: I say, He's learning but he still needs this, he doesn't mean harm. I am somehow really frightened by the noise. He gives up after half an hour of what he says are bad songs. I try to explain the galactic horizon to him. The Swan is above us. At night I'm awake a long time. I see the Milky Way has rotated through ninety degrees. Now it's Cassiopeia overhead, Orion at the foot of the band. I try dimly to imagine the earth's rotation making the change in angle. I put my arm around Tom's heavily jacketed midriff and my hand falls on his little plastic speaker. I start to laugh. He doesn't wake. I'm fretting. Waking to daylight on the car, its dark dewy red in the bleached meadow. There are wings of orange cloud rayed out around Mt Baker, white mist banked over the water. Tom - you have to wake up and see this for a moment. Then a little later it's he who wakes me. The forested shore across the way is doubled in perfect reflection. The mists are mauve. Something like that. I saw it very dimly. Before we slept Tom bringing me back with his kind of massage. Grabbing a little muscle inside my thigh and shaking it while he speaks for it very sweetly, Oo, I've been waiting for you to notice me. I worked so hard pedaling and pedaling. That mean old Tom wouldn't let me stop. Oo that feels so good. Then he went on to other places, grabbing a handful, shaking it and cooing, throwing away the tension. How do you know how to find the places? They call to me, he says. Waking the old woman in the boat. Who calls it that? Where did you learn that? He doesn't remember. That's what it's called. After breakfast we walk up along the shore to the beached bit of concrete dock. Two deer move through the deep grass behind us. Half the horizontal circle around us shows no houses or smoke - nothing human except the beautiful row of rotting piles at the end of the cove. We have a poke under his big blanket at noon. I discover I can get my fingers around the base of his penis when it's in me. That surprises him so much he comes. I ask for a slow finger and get it. Then I bring out the sheets of notes on ADD. He names his worries as they come. He's sad, he says. I can tell you why, I say. Why? Because if it's true you'll have to feel none of that was necessary. That's exactly right, he says. And then he names another one. There are things I want to do and it would mean I can't do them. No, it means you could figure out how to do them. I want you to be able to do those things, that's the whole reason I'm telling you about this. He's stowing things in the car as we talk. I drive out slowly skirting the potholes in second gear. He has the radio on. We ride back holding hands listening to the music. It's for me the best completest time. His profile next to me is showing his best self. We're in completest peace. He is a beautiful young man, a marvel. By the time we get back to the Mission his face has shifted back into a face that will be safe among the men, but I saw what I saw and it tells me I wasn't wrong about him, my joy wasn't wrong. Though, to be safe among the men, I will again become a state that doubts it. We go to the bank. I open an account and put his money into it. Give him the access card. That rattles him. It might have been a mistake. Or maybe a correct escalation. Is there anything in this account you don't like     YES Can you name it     angry I was angry most of the time     YES And I'm not telling the anger     YES Correctly angry     no Do you have a recommendation for when that happens     understand that it's sexual It's sexual anger whenever I'm inwardly carping     YES It's true that sex fixes it     YES Why don't I feel like sex     because you haven't been coming correctly Are those fantasies at an end     YES Should I stop touching myself when we do it     YES Then I won't come at all     no Will you comment     no Will you please advise me     integrate Integrate what     anger Specifically sexual anger     no Anger at men     YES I don't want them to make me come     YES How to integrate it     anger will come through by talking to unconscious Talk to anger     YES This is exciting     Do you want to say any more     it will be slow How slow     as slow as construction 11th It was mid-afternoon when we were packing the car, which was standing in deep grass with the trunk open. Salt haze, salt light, our little beach of black silt with footprints, blue water's glitter. Tom was remembering his mother in boarding houses in Atlantic City packing at the end of a vacation. Alright, we'll stay one more day, she'd say. 12th Thinking of you joyfully - not hedging it - I'm saying maybe next time we will be in doubt again, but I'm trusting you - I'm trusting your being - I'm trusting the process - I'm trusting myself. (It's between nine and ten on Friday.) 13th I suffer greatly by going into parties where from the rules of society and a natural pride I am obliged to smother my Spirit and look like an Idiot - because I feel that my impulses given way to would too much amaze them - I live under an everlasting restraint - never relieved except when I am composing - so I will write away my commerce with the world - there I am a child I give into their feelings as though I were refraining from irritating a little child - I am content to be thought all this because I have in my own breast so great a resource. This is one reason why they like me so; because they can all show to great advantage in a room. Keats letters Trilling 1951: Being a poet was his chosen way of being a man. The pleasure of the senses was for him the ground of life and thought. Masculinity as idea: "implies a direct relationship with the world, which, by activity, it seeks to come to honorable terms with; implies fortitude and responsibility and intention; insistence on one's personal value and honor." 14 Tom's voice on the phone - even toward the end of a shift - was clear and calm. "Everything makes sense. I'm a loved man, a loving man." - Trungpa, Time, space and knowledge: The tendency to look elsewhere, outside, or behind has died away, and has been replaced by an utterly complete and positive presence. Wealth is intrinsic to our being. When this is recognized there can be no bondage, fear, or worry, and no ugliness or imperfection, for the presence of these is itself incomparable beauty. It is a matter of beginning with a firm commitment to respecting the unqualifiedly positive nature of our being, celebrating it to the greatest extent we are capable of at a given time ... what is important is that we nurture the value represented by our own embodiment. Freedom, openness, relaxation, power, creativity, intimacy, spontaneity, love, satisfaction and fulfillment - all are appreciation of space and time by knowledge. Compassion is an empathy for all presentations, situations and realms seen in the light of the profound value which they represent. A vigorous and responsible entry into the sphere of humanity. - God said, "Don't fight about food, i need him." So i allowed myself to be eaten. There were two more lines at the head of that but I lost them on the way out, though I was repeating the whole thing trying to hold onto it. 15 It turned out to be Paul's [Kinsella] birthday yesterday. I come in the door and we start talking. I guess the reason I've thought of matching him and Louie is that they're the same kind of relation, easy but too easy. I was there for hours but nothing happened I'd need to tell. I instructed him. And in fact if I ever begin to say anything about myself he gets up and starts doing something. That was my last complaint about him - he's afraid to take on size. Pull up the top of your spine, Paul. When I see him fretting about his Korean girl I turn into Joyce. You want her because of what you feel with her, I say. What if you could feel it without her? That thought makes him very uneasy. If he could feel it without her he would be too much of a god. It's forbidden. You hurt at the heart because you're cramping there, I say. You have to be always more loyal to yourself than to getting her. You have to tell your truth. What you're doing is cramping yourself in the hope of getting her so you'll be able to uncramp yourself when you get her. On the news last night a piece about Judith Merrill's death. A very intense woman said of her, She wasn't a nice lady. She was a shock wave. If she saw something she didn't like she'd pounce right on it. Alright, what about Keats. Soul-making: I have lived that belief. Making a brain that can take any moment, anything met, one's own existence, the facts of the world, in the largest possible way. Such a brain will write good poems if it wants to. But he's off the rails thinking the soul made, which is a capability given by a material order, can depart to the empyreal as structure and capability intact, and there relive its makings in a more tenuous material and mode. [letter 22 November 1817] Keats is ethereal. He intuits the electrical, say; he intuits himself as electrical. But he wants to make something illicit of that intuition. Shakespeare wouldn't be caught dead dreaming of the afterlife. The fact of imagining IS the afterlife, the whole of it. We have a mode of afterlife in life. Keats is next to saying so but won't. Happiness repeated in a not necessarily finer but more selected mode. That's writing's life which is generally an afterlife. The pleasure of digestion. The Christian bachelors of Romanticism died or were wrecked in sexual denial. Shakespeare we can be sure fucked. Keats' letters go vapid as soon as they are to a woman. His mother dumped him when his father died. He tried to feed himself imagined air - real air breathed deep would have driven him to rage and lust. A soul that kills itself at twenty-six I do not think well-built. Is there an and yet? I don't mean Keats didn't build as well as he could - only his time taxed him of more animal life than he could spare, given his preference for using his energy in fantasy, which doesn't feed - which is in the end only a memory of digestion. 16 Don't imagine you won't always have to do that for him - you should think about whether you are willing to do that. That was Joyce's sharpest catch (about organizing him). There was a little something at the end of the hour I still wanted to say or feel. I wanted to say that I'm proud of myself. A hundred times I wanted to run away. She understood that I wanted her to say she was proud of me, and so she did. But that wasn't quite it. I had the little blank I feel when she does something slightly off. I'm trying to see what would make it false. Not that she isn't proud; sort of that we're beyond having her stand in for the one whose pride matters? Saying it aloud in her presence is what satisfied me. Her saying it and hugging me was as if to mistake the therapeutic relation. Is that it? She wants to make it personal in a way it isn't. That's incorrect but not a mistake, it says. Therapeutically incorrect?     no But in relation to me     She misjudges my readiness     Is it because of my mum that it's wrong     She said we were lucky to have found each other. I said we had worked very hard and she had helped. That was a little fast. She was saying she envied us. That was a gift I should have acknowledged I wanted. Morning pages to unstress writing for himself: she said make it a condition. She had me be Luke, and then me with Luke. I went through stiff anger and then pleasure when the penny dropped. "My dearest darling Luke, you are being a jerk." "That's perfect," she said. Something Joyce said as I was leaving. I didn't quite get it. Love woman's capabilities are wired-in. She said that after she said, summarizing, Love woman can live (now), and I said, She's been on the young side. I said I'm afraid of losing my work. She said, Then both of you would be floundering in the sea. Anything else? It's winter. The house is cold. Heavy silver water. I'm poisoning mice. These cold feet are not supposed to happen until November. Sturla Gunnarsson, Gerrie and Louise, on Witness, CBC. An ANC-sympathizing reporter in South Africa married to a man who had been a colonel responsible for 3rd degree interrogation of emerging black leaders. He's smoking, drinking, talking; she's listening, fearfully, carefully, scrupulously. He is what he is. (She phones the man who was assigned to subvert black government in Siskei to ask for comment she knows he'll refuse. He has promised to leave her his papers.) What is remarkable is the innocence in the faces of all. It is, in appearance, a beautiful marriage of unusually real people. There was open-mouth suspense in watching them together. Her risk. His temptation. Watching it in the way I have reason to, I am wondering whether this is a time in which marriage means that stretch - as if marriage is a tempering instrument of a larger scale than we guessed. Truth and reconciliation. Hey my friend. You were stressed this aft. Things I said were too much. You didn't know what to say. You dealt with the bank. There has been no tree-trimmer work this week. Your back is in spasm. It's raining and cold. I'll come and live with you part-time, I said. 19 Luke at Trout Lake. I listened without arguing. He said I'm impersonal with him. He's like any other person. It was painful to hear that because I didn't know what he meant. How are other people personal? I could see he was saying what he needed to say and so I held on by the skin of my teeth. I don't want to know about what he's going through, I don't really want to know him, I just want his image, everyone is like that, he says. I asked what he meant by impersonal. He said critical, judgmental. 20 Oh Luke. You are the one who only wants your image. You are not standing your ground. What I'm not doing is accurately imagining. Tom says, How old is Luke? It's a guy thing. Tom is relaxed and lovely. He has set up an AA meeting at the mission. It settles me to talk to someone who has survived what Luke is. But it also pushes me to the margins where women watch while the men take chances and live largely. Though stupidly. Truth is my boy stole from me and his grandparents to buy drugs and booze and hang out in upmarket bars where he can get picked up by upmarket pussy. - It's a raw feeling this morning. In the Havana looking at a notebook from when I was thirty. The number of names in it scares me now, such random search. Almost everything in my own words is wrong. Wrong how? Wrong in writing or wrong in feeling? Somehow wrong in feeling. And yet in that time I made Trapline, wrote three poems better than I can write now. What's sore in this. Who. I'm sore about Luke. It was wrong in thinking, I couldn't think. I felt in seeing and somehow intuited very deep. But what is the thinking I couldn't do - focus, persistence, patience, rigorous habit. Writing in pencil slowly. 21st Yesterday aft at the Havana with Louie, who spends big when her week's work's done. Louie at court. The way when I'm talking her eyes are looking for social entertainment. I don't want to look at those people. - I'm in a darkling wood, crying in my blindness. I have been dreaming I can have a life with Tom. The evidence is that we won't be able to do anything together that takes money. We won't be able to live together, we won't be able to travel. I will have to take back my Sprint card and bear the fact that he can't call me. I'll have to be ready to discover that we can't have a visit because he has to pay four times (or more) his monthly storage fees because he didn't pay them when they were due. I have to understand his way is painkillers instead of a chiropractor. And why does that make me cry. When I'm in love I believe we will be able to grow without limit, but here we are stopped at the gate. We can't write letters. We can't phone reciprocally, we will have visits if I ask for them, organize them. We can't take steps to live together. All of these truths are unpleasant to him, so I'm under pressure to believe what he wants to hear himself saying. And then we have fool's paradise, we're happy on what's said not what's been done. And then the rug is jerked and I tumble. I must be dependent and separate, it says. That means I must not have fool's paradise. And that is where I'm blind. I want to believe. I want this to be a story that gives me what I want. But I have something else. Enjoy the fight, it says. I think it says. What is it that hurts. Something hurts a lot. What am I supposed to make of what is there. I mean in myself. What hurts is holding back. Not being able to go ahead and kick out the slats. I'm locked in the starting box. My options have been that I do without seeing him or hearing from him, while doing without other lovers and so submitting to deprivation and control by deprivation, or subsidizing him, which makes me vulnerable to this shame that I am paying a man to love me. I want to say piss on both of them, my son who steals from me to have stupid fun in bars, my lover who has lots of energy but doesn't like to spend any of it getting to be with me. 22nd My own task to find missing impulse. I have impulse and get stopped, and then I'm completely stopped. Hopelessness about people spoils my work and my ability to make money. It has to do with womanness. Love woman in me withholds herself, the connecting part goes unconscious. There is impulse to connect and I don't feel it. I lost it after Jam. You should expect to fight for your papers, it says. You haven't shown the dues you've paid. - I wrote that and got in the car and drove to Bellingham. Made breakfast on the rocks and said what I had been feeling about money. Tom said he was insulted and it's not worth my negativity again and again. He walked off. I drove to the bank and closed the account. Pocketed the money. Came home. Cancelled his Sprint card. There was an elegiac tune as I drove home, and still. It's four in the afternoon. He's at work. I've pulled the plug on the phone, and anyway he hasn't got the money to buy a phone card. I'm hearing the argument. Both sides come up but I'm squashing the soft one. It has been six months and the money he owes me has never been his priority. A bike, shoes, batteries, speakers, any little thing. This is what I think. I could go on if he could admit what's up with him and money. But he requires me to support his fantasy and is blaming me for being distressed. I won't support denial. We've both drawn our lines in the sand. He's saying be happy with me as I am. I'm saying, You're hard to feel safe with, give me credit in real struggle. 23rd It's four in the morning. It's dark. I'm alone. I'm wondering what happened. Checking to see if I can tell whether it's alright. On Sunday I cleaned house. There were mouse droppings everywhere. I got into the corners. I wrestled with Home Hardware for money off a stronger poison. I washed not only the sheets but the quilt and pillows themselves. When I woke in the dark I remembered that flood of effort and revulsion. I have worked so hard with Tom. I don't know what to say. I don't want defense and anger to lie to me, and yet there is true defense I need to speak. I saw yesterday, crying, that I have tried to fix him financially so that I won't have to run into evidence that being able to be with me isn't his priority. I got him the Sprint card so he would phone me, I set up the bank account so he would pay what he owes on it. I shouldn't have done either of those things but not hearing from him was such intense suffering. Putting Tom's money in the bank, I can just make the rent. I don't have money for October. I woke Louie. She said come over. I cried. She said have you thought about how to be with yourself in these days? Be quiet and be active. Think about whether you can be the ways you were with Tom with other people, not lovers. You would have needed to learn that even if you were with Tom. She said it's not the moment of happiness that's wrong. It's something that happens afterward. It's from hunger - the years you were so hungry for that. She said it's the way he has shut down about this that says he isn't ready to learn. Don't take the phone off the hook. When he phones listen for whether he's saying what you need to hear. I'm going to stop working in bed. - I went to the Publab and entered 6-16 in the play of the weather. I was finding them lovely - breathtaking. Between pieces I would hear the sad tune and think of you with friendship. I had things to say to you. I had a friendly distance. I felt a storage disk was being cleaned, files opening briefly as they're being dragged into the trash. I was saying, we got through a lot of levels. We did good. If this is as far as we can go we still did good. In the mail today there are two things: notice of a tenure appointment in the film department at UBC, and a letter from someone in PEI saying that I'm his favorite filmmaker, that he loved Brain and imagining, that in notes in origin it seems like I'm doing what needs to be done for film, and that the Front piece supported a shift in how he thought and worked. I'm talking to love woman. I say, You have been a true heart, you have been a faithful heart, you have been a strong heart, you've often been a clear heart, you've been a courageous heart, you've been a hard-working heart, you have been a resourceful heart, a valiant heart. Sometimes an inspired heart. You've been willing to suffer. Most of all you've been an honest heart. She says she wants the UBC job. I don't give her credit for the reason she wants to give, that she wants to defend her value there. I have liked to think of my San Diego marriage rock in the creek at Lillooett with cold fast water coursing against it day and night, summer, winter, energy without letup. 24th Yesterday I was feeling California. I was remembering him further back, a larger memory. In bed I was remembering earlier in the summer. It let me notice how close-focused I've been. I'm not hurting - I notice - I'm going carefully, the way I was riding the bike yesterday thinking maybe I'm not quite with it. I'm interested. I'm interested in the whole. Yesterday evening I thought, when I see sunsets I'll know you are somewhere watching them. A dream where Dave Carter is teaching me dance steps. One step forward, one step back, turn around. When I hear the unbearable ache of pop music I will feel, this is where you are, this is where you live. I have been saying to you, what's needed is not what you fear, it's not that you must be less committed to yourself. It's that you must care more, you must be more loyal to yourself. It's a commitment whose fulcrum is in any moment but it is responsible for more than the moment. Day with the computers. While I work I'm free. But at home at twilight there's an ache. 25th Here's what I think: we were both interested in the right way, we are going to want to be together. But we are shaking down. We have each made a condition. I don't accept his indolence. He doesn't accept my crashes. We are both right. When love is at hand he should not be careless and lazy. When love is at hand I should not keep tipping into fear and denial. We each also need to find out whether we want our wild state back, whether it suits us more. That's fair. Meantime we need to act. He needs to get money. I need to settle work and something else. Something else, it says - I should require love woman to help with excluded child and not just be interested in men. Yesterday I was thinking we're the Mario brothers. We didn't rest. We got through all the levels we could. We've come to our limit, temporarily or permanently. But we did good. But I should also let you be really gone, feel you as really gone. Took Luke to the airport. He's dressed for the flight - pressed black trousers, blue broadcloth. A sports jacket in some smooth tweed. What is this image, strangely smoothly conventional. Oh Luke. I liked being in a car with you. 26 Nathalie finding a structure that says "I can't take care of myself so I might as well die." The book says rephrase to "No one is looking after me so I will die." It has to do with incompetent mothering that makes the baby feel physically incompetent. It recommends Winnicott and looking after infants. - Dearest dear you - I don't have to stop loving you even if we aren't together any more. 27 The tune was gone for a day and is back. Reading back over the journal I notice the danger of doing that and in a way its uselessness. The uselessness because what I learn and note doesn't stick. I don't have it next time I need it. The danger because whichever of the conflicting attitudes I read, I'm convinced by. He's the one, we're growing without limit, OR he cons and manipulates me and doesn't care. Do you want to say something about harm from the journal     it causes a partial loss of coming through by slowing growth of balance It has defensive origins     YES Do you want to summarize     what matters is processing That I do it     no that you use it to hold back I should get more emotional     And then kill delusions     NO the emotions are not the delusions A good woman is emotionally very labile     YES A good man protects her in that     YES Tom has resisted that     YES He hasn't wanted the work of being a man     he has wanted it but not done it Will you tell me what delusions are     they are about trying to avoid conflict Conflict is basic and structural     NO Ego states conflict     YES When I talk to you I'm quite egoless     no you're in a dependent ego state We have lost our inspiration     YES Can you say what we'd have to do to get it back     feel more Is there a reason he's feeling less     YES he wants it to be over It's too hard for him     no, he wants drugs That's a preference I can't fight     YES I have been feeling his lack of preference     YES So I must let him go     YES I've gone as far as I can with him     YES Have I done something essential     YES Would you like to name it     you trusted and risked If I think of it this way I'm thankful to him for being with me     Is this ground truth, he doesn't want to do it     YES And I do     YES Now I hurt at the heart and that's correct     YES But am I also copping out     no He is     YES Does he know it     YES He isn't going to say that's what he wants     YES I just have to know what I know     This feels true         YES By the stretch at the heart     YES There is a kind of trembling when one feels the truth     YES Will he go back to drugs     YES This way is too hard for him     He doesn't have the brain for it     no, he doesn't have the strength of character I could have known this from the beginning     YES But was it good that I tried     YES When I'm stopped at the solar I'm not in the truth     YES Is that simple and infallible     YES So when I speak to you I'm speaking to heart knowledge     no I use it Being in true knowledge is what I mean by soul     YES Anything else you want to say before I stop     come through Something particular?     processing the conflict between love woman and control Control of?     the other person Love woman feels them, control doesn't     YES Is there a right answer     initiative for the whole when there's a crisis of balance For instance acting for the good of both     YES Love woman is the one who is thankful and willing to let him go     Control wants him back     YES If I really feel him I'll let him go thankfully     28th Phil's party for Jill. I came in the door and I wasn't a dud. I took responsibility and spoke as if my ordinary self is good enough. It began before the punch. I talked about what was on my mind, Luke, Tom, the UBC job. I was talking as if what matters is not so much what is spoken about as being with that person in curiosity and generosity. I think that is correct. I mean I think that is the way to do it. It includes being with myself in curiosity and interest. But it's not at all deep. It's a kind of surfing on oneself, let what's below you take care of itself and just move. When I was awkward and in pain was that better     Why or how is that better     it's the child So was I faking it last night     YES Because I don't want to be in pain     no, experimenting You're saying it works but that's not it     YES I must always be the child at parties     YES Then I go to parties looking for a loved one     And not finding     NO When I'm not the child do I look ugly     Will you tell me what's the correct way to be at a party     act to teach feeling enterprise Can you give me an example of feeling enterprise     speak to improve the unspoken struggle I'm supposed to do this for other people     no Teach the child feeling enterprise     YES Do you mean take into a party a real vulnerability     But don't be helpless in it     YES Because that's the way to live in heart     YES In the garden today. People were here and there doing things, no one was directing. Dave opened up the path and set a new drain route. There was water springing out of the 6" perf pipe, a wonderful spring into the pond. Carlos took on the blackberries west of the herb garden and opened a swath. Wouldn't stop till he met Cam's little clearing from the other side. I got into the aisles east of the herb garden and shoveled gravel off the path. The meetings we have as we work: I find Hertha to tell her I've left plant sale seedlings in the greenhouse, Pem calls me to give me apples, I pick Susan gooseberry kiwis to try, Dave asks me to look at a pipe, Muggs calls people to lunch, I find Carlos gloves and a fork, I have a disk for Cam, Joan comes kindly to talk about cattail drying space because I've been distressed by suggestions of racks hung from our beautiful high ceiling, Bell is Dave's handy helper, Joann and Hertha are path weeding together up by the red shed, little boys have organized to get at the more hidden grapes, a Rastaman plays patiently with his baby at the herb garden tank. Beautiful Sophie passes through with Betsy's Hannah, both garden babies now composed nine year olds. Sophie says Hi Ellie with impressive well-brought-up grace. The air was damp, the light, grey. 29 I go check my Visa card. Machine gives me $20 though I'm over my limit. I buy a new journal for $7. Thirteen till the end of October. Oh well. volume 12 the golden west volume 11: 1997 may-september work & days: a lifetime journal project