1st Nov
It's a new kind of trouble I think - exactly what I will find out.
-
Harpers September 1994, p.41 piece on sports:
... body its own manner of finely sentient consciousness, making decisions without benefit of thought and delighting in its choices. The matrix of the field and the weave of moving bodies induce an altered state of being ... there is only your breathing and the physics of the moment ... an aperture will begin to seal up even before the ball has passed entirely through it ... bliss.
"a primary expression of American character," "a language we all speak," "a seasonal cycle"
"as powerful in the souls of men as love, work and sex"
boys absorbed, enlivened, dedicated, devoted - heroes - life's magnificent moments - embedded in a dream of male glory - "fiercely felt allegiance to life itself" - pure moments
- 'American' somehow means 'male' (to men)
- Entertainment, crime, sports, war, religion, commerce
- Sports obsession driven by something that could be used better? no, integrates the male body
- Realized men don't watch sports YES
- It's good for boys not men YES
- He says the pure form is art but it's also an addiction YES
- Feeling evoked but its personal meanings evaded YES
- Do you want to explain sports to me success, delayed, judgment, of the father
- It's about competition with the father
- Sports heroes are better than the father YES
- Gods are YES
- Actual skill is good
- It would be better to really exceed the father YES
- But there's conflict about that
- It feels like murder
- Is it murder YES
- Will a father die if he is exceeded YES
- So fathers have to be willing to stay ahead of their sons YES
- Did Tom's dad feel he was exceeded no
- Did Tom's dad sabotage him YES
- Tom doesn't want to know that YES
- And he doesn't want to do it to his own sons YES
- So there's a way he's staying away from them out of love YES
- Was it because he withholds his anger from me that he went off on that guy YES
- Have I got the gist of this
- Entertainment, crime, sports, war, religion, commerce
Sunday 2nd
What do I make of this: two men in my middle room have pulled down the blue plaster, the white ceiling, the red door, the white clouds. I worked happily in that room this morning and didn't know I should say goodbye to it.
Twenty-one years. Making a room for Luke. Pulling down wallpaper, cutting out slumped plaster, nailing up a cloud and an old door over bare lathe. Paul K's bed while I was in Alberta, his philodendron that circled the room twice. The wood cupboard Luke remembered through years in London. The little city he drew, cut out and fitted into the cloud's hill slope.
Thirteen years ago Michael helping me remake the room. White ceiling, a better shade of blue. Dark blue band painted at the height of a picture rail, both blues off a Player's package. Floor sanded and varethaned-over so the red was left only in the cracks. Yellow door. Dark blue iron bedstead. The room in September with pink Japanese anemones on the floor in the London bowl. Yellow, pink, white, blue, dark blue, glossy reddish floor.
Then Rowen in his floor crib. Then Luke back when he was 19, his long bed and candle shelf with a scorch mark up the cloud. The Christmas I wrote my MA thesis in it.
Then why did I move my bed back into that room. It was for love woman. Ken. The green blanket, the red plaid blanket. Bookwork. The Christmas Day in agony. My papers on perception, imagining, metaphor. Dave and Francie in my bed when I went to San Diego. Two years of hope and suffering writing Tom, waiting, penned up in the bed loving a man, writing philosophy, talking to Louie on the phone.
Today I asked Choy if his drywall guys could patch the walls when they do the ceilings. Go ahead, he said. I came back from the garden with Louie and my room was piled in the garden. Later I saw someone had separated out the woman warrior cookie tin lid and set it against the side of the house. There she is on the kitchen table.
3rd
It's 5:30. Raining. I'm in the back room with stuff from the other room piled around.
-
A Vietnamese, a Cantonese. I found their rice cooker in the hall when I came home. Plaster powder in my hair. Oh deep mess.
4th
Today was a gift. Andy Clark's new book is called Being there and says what I have been saying, that people are entrained by the world. He calls it something else and he isn't brave enough to be able to say Don't call it representation. He credits Gibson though in a hedging way, but he's making the case.
There was sun. I rode to Java Cat, curled in an armchair, drinking good coffee, reading Clark.
Guessed what to do with the red door and was right. Dave Carter wants it. That's very satisfying.
6th
Working in my rep notes over the edge of excitement. I know so much. It's as if anything I pick up, I know new things about it. I've set up a structure that works. I'm coherent.
New walls sanded. Work nest set up in the back room. Lunch with Louie, laughing. We can bring Rowen for a visit at the end of November. American Thanksgiving for Tom. Kirk on the steps at Il Mercado says I'm a wonderful writer but he didn't understand Brain and imagining. Tom wants to buy a truck.
I'm waking eager for this work.
7
'79 Dodge half-ton pickup. I'll write that to mark it for you. Why did I suddenly feel I dreamed you years ago, maybe twenty years ago, one of those dreams about a man I'll be with in the future improbably.
Other things I wanted to say to you - did you see the light today? Winter light, twilight in the afternoon, dull flamingo pink in the west, pearl grey powder suspended everywhere, the sun in its few moments exquisitely pale. I was saying: here's what it's like, winter.
You - I'm missing your writing self. I'm saying this lonesomely. It's urgent. I want you to understand this. I don't care whether you ever publish again, I need to hear your voice. I need to hear you. I need to know you. I need to know you alone with yourself with me. I want you to understand this isn't your dad wanting you to be a real artist. It's a woman who took you up on my offer to be her man, whose soul is hungry for your company.
- Is it fair to make that demand more than
fair
- Is he heartbroken about writing the way I have been no
- Do you want to name it just heartbroken
- That's my task
- Does he ever long to write
- 'It's a woman who took you up on my offer to be her man,' is that a real sentence YES
- Love woman YES
- Took him up on my offer to be her man YES
- Is he lonely for that in himself no
- Then why is it correct the world needs him
- It needs him to write
- Please comment joint construction
- You mean it needs to be community writing YES
- Do you give me that loneliness YES
- I accept gladly YES
- I feel confident of my knowledge YES
- No one is certifying me
- I'm brave YES
- But there is a level of fear YES
- It's fear that I'm evil for knowing YES
- Is that fear of punishment YES
- Was I punished for knowing YES
- And rewarded
- Will it help to say what I know
- Am I knowing too much
- Will you comment slow growth
- I believe that life allows knowledge
- Do I withhold from publishing because I'm afraid to show I know YES
- Is there a reason why I am able to know what they aren't YES organization
- An ability to organize YES
- Is it related to being abandoned yes, mourning and work woman
- Mourning grows organization
- Is there more you want to say about this YES recovery
- You're allowing me to know things so I'll help
- Is that what you want to say no, improve sharing completion of coming through
- Instruction
- Is he heartbroken about writing the way I have been no
8th
Esther Dyson's mother left her when she was five. What she said at the time was No one needs a mother after they stop needing milk. Now she's forty and she has no home life. She swims flat out for an hour a day. The rest of the time she does two related things: makes money she has no interest in spending, and reigns as computation forecaster of America. When you meet her she doesn't say How are you. [This was a story in Fast Company probably, or Wired.]
A baby with Dave Carter's eyes, grey-black, round little head. Fearless interested excited little person. I held him on my lap with his back to me so he could see his folks, and when I spoke he leaned his head back and looked up into my face with so intimate an interest I had to strengthen myself to meet it. Jacob.
I saw the little family coming back from the garden to their truck in the alley, beautiful Dave, beautiful Francie, beautiful Jacob in a sling on his father's hip. Standing next to the truck having given them The abilities of babies which I bought when Luke was little, Rowen's Richard Scarey and the fairy tales. You'll miss the door Francie said. No I won't I said firm and free - but then as I held the baby and they put stuff away, a little distracted noticing I'd had the grandmother feeling for the first time.
Dave coming into my house as he does, as I like, happy to see its beauties again. There he was standing next to the window in my work room finding it scaled to him: arm's height up, arm's height down, arm's length across.
Reading the Michael Snow book feeling the smallness of my work in film - and at all.
Suddenly lonely tonight - working and when I stop it's evening - oh - an ache - it's too long to Tuesday - shall I call - naw - I won't bother him - naw it's past the best time - alright I will. Pat me, I say. You were thinking about us today, you say. What you say makes me nervous, it's all on the vanilla side. But still I'm willing to be patted down. I'm stepping forward testing thin ice.
Sunday 9th
Worked so hard today. Started at 5:30, saw the clear dawn lighting a plume of steam over against the Lions. Started with the hardest, Rosen. Oh that was long ago. Out into the day at 9:30. My brakes were mush. Went to Commercial on a bike without brakes, too - what is that? Brought home bright food I chomped with pleasure reading Clark from the back (walnuts, raisins, raw cabbage, chopped MacIntoshes, new carrots, flax seed oil, salt).
After Clark, the math guy. My system now is to have a stack hardest to lightest. When I've got to my end with one I'm fresh enough for the next. It's mostly same old diagnostic - what's their variant of sticking in those two bad metaphors, inner representation and outer rep spoken of as object. It doesn't stop them getting new things right, which is odd, because the way I instantly recognize right new moves is the way I've anticipated them from what I've got already.
Finishing with winter evening's yellow horizon all around, so lovely, and why is it only at this season. Then having got to the end of it for books I go wash woodwork in the gyproc room. The guy arrives to sand the last bit of wall so I wash woodwork in the kitchen. Then floors.
Alright, television. Skating. Cook some vegetables. It's eight. I've spoken to no one today but strangers. These skater stars without musical feel. Couples free-dance surely has to be - I want it to be - deep sex - that dug-downness into the music. They'd be coordinated automatically if they were deep enough into it.
And you, my friend - you and I don't often get to our depth but we've got each other there once or twice and marked the spot - that's the fact - Tom.
10
Wake feeling what my righteousness is. I was furiously righteous with Olivia. I was saying, you're ugly, mediocre and corrupt and I'm not.
But what is this? Recovery, it says. Recovery of ambition? Yes. A wish to press. I was rigorous but disabled. Then I wasn't rigorous and could act. Now I can have rigor and act? No. Can I have rigor and action as a balanced contradiction? Sort of. What does that mean in practice? Early love. Early love is action, rigor curbs it? No. I'm confusing rigor and capability, it says. It isn't about mastery of early love, it is about allowing early love strongly enough so it gets to capability. This is key isn't it. No. What is? Excluded child. Because it's excluded early love? Yes. Incapability has to do with a brain that isn't allowed to balance. If the brain is released, capability follows? Can follow. This is where rigor comes in? Call it focus. A released brain will want to do something. Our parents thought of discipline as curbing but really it's the opposite - it's focused allowing.
13th Thursday
But I am righteous I said to Tom. Oh you're over the top with righteous.
I found him in the kitchen leaning on the counter staring at something on or over the shelf that has the nasturtiums and tea and coffee jars in the California lamp's light, and my imaginary book covers above. What are you looking at? I'm thanking god for allowing me to have this woman in my life.
I scraped frost off my windshield early Tuesday and drove down to get you. We're going to do the border straight, you said. I was starting to talk about how to organize the painting work. You were outraged. By the time we got to the border we had explained it through. Poppy day. We'd shopped in Blaine. The older man in the booth said something like: You have a good time, now. That was it - the border. Pale sun, the spreading fields, rims of mountain on the plain. Driving. You start grabbing when we get in the door. I say I'm going to read you my journal. Make tea and lie down.
14
I don't have clear memory of these three days. Why. We sat in bed Tuesday night. He went through my interview newspaper-editing it. I kept saying You're right, feeling cornered until I could say, I know it isn't a good interview but if I cross my t's and dot my I's I'll come across as pedantic, and if I don't I'll seem incoherent. How did we come through that. I don't remember.
Looking at his face on the pillow saying, Did your other wives want to fuck first thing in the morning every morning? I guess. And when I got home from work too.
What I'm asking is, what kind of relation is this? Or what kind is it now? It's working. We're able to get through our startled jarred exasperated moments. But what am I doing with someone like him at all. Should I be doing this? Our terms in general are not intimate. I talk down, I don't have free use of my best when I talk. He does something similar emotionally, protects me from his actual only-child autocracy. Yet I come out of three days with him steady and contented. It would have been unlikely with anyone else.
This time there was his way of working. He had to buy a bucket. I'm in General Paints scandalized I guess is the word. We have a million buckets. I go out to wait in the car so I won't shame him. He's spending five dollars on something we have already. A grate, a bucket, another roller sleeve. He spent twenty dollars he didn't need to spend. My pleasure in organizing small means is spoiled. He wants to just do it his way. I can see that if I work ahead and do the edges he can - etc. But he wants me out of the way, just him and Otis Redding while I hang out in the other room with nothing to do, cold because the windows are open. He isn't used to having a woman thinking around him. It's ADD inflexibility, I'm thinking. People who have to do it their way or they'll lose it. But I have to do it my way too. But I'm feeling sidelined. He says don't wipe the splats. But they're drying, it will be easier to do them now. He wants to do them because he thinks I'm criticizing his painting as I wipe drips. I decide to just do it. I am used to thinking for the ensemble. He isn't used to being thought for. It's the struggle that's interesting to me, as if I am struggling with a father who this time thanks god for his wonderful little girl and is willing to learn because he wants her to thrive, but doesn't yet quite know how it's done.
What else - oh, sexing - the way your hands are both spread somewhere on me - mine on you - holding each other round. Shameless kissing. I like the way I don't know what you are going to do next. You often don't know what I want.
When we were on stools at the Bagelry looking out the window a very thin gay man in loose spandex that showed his genitals sent you a naked look through the glass.
The countryside yesterday in smog and winter light. Branches, berries, glitter on corn stubble. Mountain ranges grey-blue cut-outs. Old barns and sheds. Cottonwood plantations with stiff last leaves. After I leave you at the mission, though, I don't have heart for looking at sights. Home. On North Star a red-tailed hawk lit on a telephone post dangling a mouse. Seen from the freeway in Surrey, mountains on Vancouver Island almost dissolved in the yellow sky.
Now it's eight on Friday morning. I have eleven days till I see you and Rowen. Have to get the paper set up. We're having days of sun. There's a crow on the grey house roof. Dew on the window. After you came yesterday - you came singing in the nicest way - you were all young and lovely, looking at clouds in the upper pane of that window. A dog, a lion, a fertility goddess. My bum. The way you used to go up into the clouds and look down at the ravishing mystery of a milkman delivering milk, factory workers laboring in a factory.
I want to praise you for a paragraph before I go to work. I love how much you want sex. I love your enjoyment everywhere you are. I love the way you don't carp or criticize. I didn't expect you to be impeccable about a physical job but you are. I like your robust eagerness that I don't have to protect. You declare yourself emotionally and that helps me to. I like your fairness in dispute. I like your complicated face, your many faces, a constant entertainment to see. I love your voice. You whistle on key, though you sing off - did you know that? (Tuesday night I was falling asleep feeling the vibration of your voice with the whole front of my body wrapped against you.) I like the way you want to fall asleep embracing. I like your energy, the way you don't stop all day. Having fun is hard work, you said - and I could see, suddenly, that having fun is your discipline. Let's not waste life, you've always said.
-
Nathalie in the Harbour Centre basement says she feels a weight in her heart, a grey thing this big, both soft and hard. What does she want to do with it. Put it on a shelf. What if she heats it a little. It gets bigger, fills the room, fills the world.
I realize I'm not close enough to the process to see where to take it. I remember Joyce and the rock that was a seed when it had unwound a scream of life from inside it. I say I don't know but what worked for me was getting support and letting it get worse. She says it was so painful with Loki she can't do it again. I say it's different with support, because it doesn't just cycle. She says she can't do it when she's with Marté, he's too Catholic, he won't understand. I say maybe it's precisely with Marté that she should do it, risk it. The grey is the greyness of not taking the risk. I say it in a kind of offhand way, not being conscious therapist. It's as if she lets a spark cross a gap. She gets it.
-
Just looking at my interview again and thinking, You read this and had
nothing to say about the life. You read Livable margins and
had nothing to say! The way Mike also had nothing to say. There are my photos
all around us when you're here and you have nothing to say. I read you my
journal and you have nothing to say. How do women bear to be so invisible
in their gifts and struggles. You're here with me and you're giving your
detailed attention continuously to the creation of men's music, men's movies.
What am I thinking of, putting up with that.
- the golden west volume 12: 1997-98 september-january
- work & days: a lifetime journal project