the golden west volume 15 part 4 - 1998 november-december

work & days: a lifetime journal project

9 November A huge fat man slammed my car door with all his strength. If it's over I can hold that moment against the lovely moments that want me to try again. He's massive, physically powerful, arrogant on the strength of gains he wouldn't have without me, self-absorbed like a baby, intolerant, ignorant of his own state, expecting to be served, expecting to be served without having even to know he is expecting it, armoured, wadded thick with padding, furious, tyrannical, stupid. He looks thuggish, like a corrupt bodyguard. He looks blind. 10 Do I remember what that meeting was like? I liked his shoes, I liked the color of his shirt: green. He was not tight-buckled into smooth thin leather. He was wide as a barrel in a hug. When we'd had our talk by the sparkling sea where two armoured hydrofoils lumbered back and forth sending up thin sheets of spray fore and aft, he was sitting back on the bench with his arms to the sides, a stance that said he was happily back in command, while I was edging around wondering how a body half his size can feel anything but dominated when he does that. And what does dominated mean - it means without inner motion. I can see that protest and explanation play into it, they confirm it. He was sitting that way because I had been explaining, probably. And what of it. My task isn't combat, it's inner motion. 11 I woke at night saying weakly, you are not the man you were. The man you were was thin and so hungry for me, so naked of heart. That man is gone forever. I have no reason to be with this man who doesn't want to lose me but doesn't feel me. I'm wasted on him, wasted. I say with tears. I am wasted on him     no In what sense not     excluded child It is she who is wasted on him     YES She was wasted on my father     Is it she who is speaking whenever I cry     no He seduced me by means of her     YES Did he know what he was doing     no   So I'm mourning that he has stopped seducing me by means of her     Wrong thing to mourn for     I want her to be with me     YES Her sadness is her with me     Was that health and beauty her with me     YES   Can I have it without him     Will you tell me how     by losing the child, something about Tom, something about the mother Losing three things     YES Have the child by losing the child     YES Losing dependency     YES Depending on people to give me the child, that's what 'draw me out' means     YES I must give something up, but is there something I must take up     YES, anger Do you mean own it     Is it unconscious     YES By anger do you mean malicious intent     YES That is what's stopping me     Tom released me from it       It's primarily at my father     But at my community too     Will you tell me how to work with it     process, husband, come through, complete it That's why kissing his body moved me to the core     YES Work with myself in relation to the notion of husband     YES It doesn't have to be Tom     no, it is Tom   Do you want to say more     partial loss Work with the partiality of loss     YES Do you mean of the child     YES Can you be more specific     integrate, your work, on imagining, Tom By imagining Tom     YES The child needs to imagine the reality of the father     YES By some particular method     YES by working with his indecision I'm not getting it     be intelligent He is indecisive about wanting to be with me     no He is indecisive about wanting to stay defended     YES Was my father indecisive that way       I sometimes take it as settled     Work with his indecision to what end     to bring him through For his sake?     no, for yours I'll bring my child by working for his     YES I want you to say I can be independent     YES But the child is dependent     You're saying I must be willing to be dependent     YES But working for him gives me independence at the same time     YES   Is that it for now     no, another question Will you tell me what     question about Tom Will he stay withdrawn     Do you know the answer     no, but that's the question 12 Today I'm remembering Tom as a dragon - big, old, grey, harsh, armoured, heavy, with dragon eyes - loveless eyes - dragon's irritated autocracy, out of my way small thing - dragon's aloneness, battle scars, solely mineral universe - primitive and robotic, not before but beyond human - once long ago he was a beautiful human boy - and he's not soulless now, but the soul there is is cold like outer space, blank, coldly angry, a will to be nothing but command. I'm thinking this dragon soul is normal manhood, which is to my sense of it too far beyond childhood, like the cold minerality of an extinct planet. Women stop sooner, they don't go on past adulthood into the mechanical, like the transformer-warriors who were Rowen's dolls, a man who becomes a tank or a fighter plane. From my point of view it is appalling, but to them it's destiny welcomed. When it isn't welcomed there is an unfinished man, like many who won't accept to be made metal and so are weak. Like Tom when he drank to confuse the process of stiffening. How am I in relation to the dragon? Frightened, sad, defeated of hope. 16 Days later. Saturday night sitting on Tom's lap on a bench in the shopping plaza in Hillcrest got him out of his shell, he said. Brunch at Eliz's on Sunday morning. Nora and I sing church harmony. I come to the garden a-lone / When the dew / Is still on the / Ro-ses. Somebody in me is freaked around Mo. Eliz was showing the presence of quite a harsh old man, her curls like a periwig around an ascetic, I want to say Ancienne Régime, face. Nora knows how to be a girl with girls. I defended positions I had to defend to defend myself, though I laughed disloyally too. There was a lot of tension about lesbians. I said it's about the relation of love woman and work woman, and it's a way to take on the depths of the relation to the mother. Eliz said her mother isn't competitive. Mo that hers isn't either. I looked at the windows and rugs and ate wonderful food and began to be exhausted. 17 Just act, it said. I was stuck. There were white lines scribbling in the black - short white lines - jiggling forward or sideways quickly erased - and then sometimes when they appeared nearer by, a sudden plunge forward that made them waterfalls. White torrents smashing white and wide, the whole black foreshore awash in white. There were tall palms and I was discontent, wide-world lonely. Not good company. 18 I'm lonely for a context I can be more, in. Either a place with only world and no people, or else a place with people who have worked to take their bearings from the best. Artists. It means I'm lonely for my best. What would a life be like where I was not excluded. How do I really want to live, I say with a sick heart. Why. Because I believe I will have to give up what I have. I will say what I felt yesterday morning when Nora and Tom were talking at the kitchen table. It was anguish I was uncertain about. I was feeling how comfortable he would be with another kind of woman. I wasn't certain it wasn't just woman competition, which it also was, because of her quality. There would be California, pop music. She'd be interested in his topics and she'd laugh at his jokes. She'd be pleased by him. My heart is aching on both sides, at losing to another woman, and in his position too, at how comfortable I'd be with another kind of man who was interested in my topics and pleased with my music. There it is, that's the structure of the ache. I want to say, please take him, make him happy, and then I will be free to find someone of my own kind. I want to say, he's mine, I'll die if you take him, I will be so shamed to have lost the competition that I will sicken and expire. There is none of that soul-confidence I have with Louie, that we love each other's being and it's firm, forever, whatever. Sunday freaked me     YES Being included put me in the way of the currents of hatred     YES Puts me in the way of the currents of competition     YES Other people bear it better than I do     no But they don't opt out     no, they do Is there a solution     NO Is there a free position     YES, it is growing slowly I can't just step into it     no I can, but I can't maintain it     ... mm There is a free position but 'I' can't step into it     YES Do you want to say any more     succeed in coming through It is not a first position, it is an integrated position     YES 23rd, Monday I've moved the bed so that sitting feeble under the plaid blanket I have sun on the page, warm feet. There's the orange tree. I'm the kind of tired that happens to me after heavy work, achy, soon over the line. I liked seeing the waves at the Cove, body surfers and sea otter, but the long bike ride and Tom's voice driving on, the way he tells me things he's told before, because he's in driven energy and not paying attention - it's always going to be that way. He doesn't consider my fragility. Yesterday I was pushing to finish forking over the last edge and I kept coming on areas where I had to drive the fork down and lift roots because he hadn't pushed the shovel down when he ran into an obstruction. He didn't think it through - he didn't think what my job was and what it needed from him. I asked him to come and dig down a bit for me. He did three shovel bites and left. He didn't feel like it. And didn't want to hear about it. "That's fork woman's job." The other day I noticed that he paid attention to taking heavy jobs from me when he knew Nora was watching. He had let me drag the rocks until then. He long ago learned he could save energy by giving women language instead of attention. Let me find the justice here. He didn't have to help me dig at all. He's paying for gas and buying groceries. I am supplying car and house. He vacuumed and swept. I ironed his shirt. He really is inconsiderate of my physical fragility. He's inconsiderate of my conversational fragility. He never learns not to overload me. It's because he's ADD and besides that long ago determined to get away with anything he can. It was downright stupid of him to chap his penis on the bike. - This weekend: Thursday he walked in two hours late and found me holding the sides of my head in distress of fear. Took me into the bathroom to show me he'd chapped his dick. No sex this weekend though we may not have a bed again for a month and it has already been more than three months. We went to Sheldon's for supper, on his traces. He was there with his mom and dad. Salmon in greasy batter I had to chip off. He had chocolate mousse cake for desert. Came home and watched Thelma and Louise. Made up the trundle bed. Friday. Worked well. He put on Jimmy Clift. At twilight we were in Ocean Beach eating at the Greek's, where I ate three years ago when I was new in town. There was rosy apricot light on the one-story wall on the corner, palms like flags, tender blue sky. Over the pier later was the first of the new moon. We saw it sink from the cross-arm at the end of the pier. Came home and watched The big chill and another thing not worth naming. Went to bed barricading the door against the little cat. Saturday he got to drive the car alone through dawn to work. I dug on my own. He came home with groceries and videos. There was a long preamble about the videos that should have tipped me off. The wild bunch. We were sitting together but he wasn't touching me. In the last shoot-out, I'd had it. Walked out and sat on the bench. I was taking a stand. He had turned it off. "Come in and talk about it." "No, sit down and talk about it here, and don't move, so the light stays off." I made a speech. He said his consciousness was raised. I thought I'd wait and see but he seemed to be moved. Went to bed early. When I woke in the dark I heard him sighing with each exhale, a lovely sound. Sunday morning he made the coffee. I was groggy from the melatonin. Told him the story of finding Vi Thompson in Cannon Beach. He listened well. "Sometimes you see a light and it's the last light on the headland and you feel everything it means, its whole history." Yes, that was right. He was himself, calm, genuine, intelligent. I knew that one would soon be gone but there he was. We got up and had bacon and eggs and toast and he put on the Eagles. He said there was a song coming he had heard first one night when he was writing for a paper. He sat back and listened. It was Take it to the limit. At the end of the Eagles, suddenly Calling all angels came on. That to me seemed supernatural. I worked too long, wanting to finish the stretch, exhausted, angry when I had to pick up detail he didn't notice. Stunned with fatigue on the freeway, looking at the stores and palm trees with a blankness I was trying to name. There he was, dockers, white shirt, tie, belt, dress shoes, paunch, reciting lines about how a gentleman dresses. Grooming class in Catholic school. Gone away, away. At midnight I had slept and was standing in the kitchen drinking milk when they tromped through the gate excited. We sat up talking. That was lovely. My dirty gorilla boots from Luke. 4711 cologne - that lemony smell from the dresser drawer in the Madchenzimmer in Clearbrook Road - clean hair, white shirts, the strawberry field, Frank taking pleasure. Nor had stolen a hymn book. We sang: When peace like a river Atte­e-endeth my way When sorrows like sea billows roll Whatever befalls, you have Taught me to say: It is well, it is well, With my soul I was surprising myself with my low strong voice. We sang a perfect duet. - Castaneda has been on my bed table this last month since I'm here. The power of silence. I read it feeling the fact of his death, the spiteful incomprehension of his ex-wife, the weakness of attention that made a cult of his first books and ignores the later books that complete those books. More than anything the faithful hunger he had to make life magnificent, to be equal to mortal aliveness. His books are about possibilities of perception, meaning also that they are about the size of the world given. There was a politics too: he was faithful to a weightless culture made in his own landscape. There is always land: desert, mountain, road, daylight, twilight, night. The weightlessness of the culture he transmits is of that landscape. I mean it can be carried there. Carlos Castaneda 1987 The power of silence: further lessons of Don Juan Simon and Schuster Does anyone read him now? There are always crazies underlining library copies, looking for superhuman powers. I don't read that in him. I ignore what I don't understand. What I do understand is that he is telling stories about shifts of state. He doesn't always understand. He says as much as he knows quite humbly. It is what he has for the time being. Do I believe the books are novels? If they are, then they are in some way dictated. The relation of the books to each other seems correct. I mean dictation the way the [string and cards] book teaches me. I don't know how it works but I recognize the moral authority and otherness of what is said. It seems to me that he has a technical vocabulary some of which is clean and direct, and some of which is metaphor. moving from the place of no pity to silent knowledge moving from the place of concern to the place of reason The way Tom as we lay in bed momentarily shifted into the mind he used to write from - the one I think of as fancy - and said something completely fresh and correct in its fanciness, that I could not remember later, though I remembered my delight. [Castenada notes not transcribed] The way I am with Tom is often weak, and the main weakness is the way I want to explain to him. It's weak because he knows already. The weakness is wanting not to know that he knows already and he's being malicious. He likes to exhaust me. He's either stupid or malicious, and I choose to say stupid. This is right isn't it     YES Well, there's a humor in that     YES Is there anything you want to say about this     he likes to deceive That is a kind of stupidity     YES Do I know how to fight correctly     no Please tell me     utter honesty Do you want to qualify that     NO It means no tricks, no flattery     Reading Castaneda in relation to living in London and what I was learning then, struggles with T and R, work with Joyce and the book, present life with Tom. Especially this: the reach of my own project, the instinct there has been all along, silent knowledge from childhood on, a question about its relation to what I'm doing now. The academic project, the Tom project. What it is I recognize and recall when I read him, being with Tom a rare chance to be impeccable in spite of ego. "The act of giving freely and impeccably rejuvenates me and renews my wonder." Older dark silent part equal to anything, enjoys without expectation. New light fluffy part, nervous, fast, insecure, doesn't enjoy, cares. They enter into a debate. Hiding ruthlessness behind a mask of indulgence and laxness, that's Tom. Always demanding without voicing it that people be aware one is deceiving them. The state of ego is a state of real cruelty and self-absorption, feelings convenient to the one who feels them. The state must always be masked. Hiding it behind a mask of - will you tell me what my mask is?     YES, teaching An overarching story about learning skill     YES I have been learning skill and yet I'm no further ahead     YES And yet I'd be deeply unsatisfied if I hadn't done it     What I keep feeling is that I haven't given an account of my real project and experience. I'm just stirring and balancing today, nowhere. Sitting in bed. Don't know what to do about my work. Grateful to the sun. I wish I had a lover with whom there was deep simple pleasure. I need it physically. (No, it says: what you need physically is intelligence.) 29th You look good these days, clear. How am I. I'm behind, I think. Yawning. I wake at two and can't go back to sleep. A lot of heavy work this week. Sore all over. 30th From Nathalie: It has been a rollercoaster ride. For the past weeks I was running toward the past going through every feeling I've ever had. I ended up at the beginning of my existential void, when I was 5. Anyway to make a long story short, at some point I felt unacceptable to other humans. I thought it stemmed from being a girl, so I refused to be one hence behave like one. It seemed too painful. After it turned into a complete refusal to be a woman. It made me aberrant, and that's what is unacceptable. Refusing what I was made me afraid of being in the world and alienated. I am now ready to be a woman. I finally have gained the feeling I had when I was with Stephan. I feel strong and beautiful. I'm not afraid of having the body language of a woman now. I am no longer a victim and I am not looking for a man to make me feel like a woman. I think that was my missing piece. I asked Loki to take me out on a date as my 'debut.' Love, 2nd December You have a library card. And a room at the Maryland. Going over your sums again and again. We have a place. We have a place. I have a hundred clean file folders and a package of squared paper. Louie phoned with my bank statements. There is enough for six months. I've been on hooks. There's enough. 4th Close to the end of this book. I have not been writing much. I haven't been close enough to my own interests. Or had enough energy to find interests as I write. It's Friday morning, overcast for now though there is sweet blue between fluffs. There is the orange tree, straight ahead, its six young stems and parasol canopy decorated with small circles. I'm not very lively. Among other things I am a household servant. Talk about that. I don't write about them here. It is too risky. I'm economically dependent. I am making what I can of it. Because I am not writing about it, I am too blind in it. There is a little girl, who is a pink and silver princess. If I am not wearing my big slippers she casts unconscious glances at my little foot. She is being strenuously curbed. There she sits at the dining table after school, set to a spread of paperwork she interrupts to make phone calls arranging activities for a net of people. She has fun with her mum but she doesn't get fed. She's beautifully dressed. Yesterday there was a tutor. But I'm not saying it. I'm saying what I've said. Her father gets drunk in front of her and her mother competes with her and doesn't feed her. She lives in ease: clothes, bath gels, cosmetics, whatever it takes. On her left side she's three years old, it's dark and there is no message. She doesn't like it there. Fighting with Tom yesterday. He'd spent the afternoon on the car. Oil change and lube, washed it, armour-alled the interior, vacuumed it, used cutting compound. I was supposed to say Oh Tom you are so wonderful, but I was dubious - very dubious - about the fact that he'd spent a hundred dollars. I suspected it was to do with preserving manly face with the garage men. He was doubtful himself and in raging denial, I could see. Oil changes and lubes are advertised for thirty bucks. Koo does it for twenty-five. He could say he both did well and blew it. I could see he couldn't bear me to say it. I was in a quandary. Then he couldn't bear me making suggestions about our route. I said the freeway would be slow at this time of day. He said he knows everything about this town. We approached the freeway and saw it was packed but moving. He ducked onto the drive on the east side of the bay. He was furious and gunned the motor. I was frightened. I knew it was intimidation and knew he would deny it and knew I'd have to get us off the road before I said more. It had to do with John Grey. I was irked about being pressured to shut up first about the cost of the oil change and then about the freeway. I brought up John Grey in the way I do, summoning an ally among the men, who says men can't stand being given directions or corrections - call it a weakness, humor them. Tom won't get to the bottom of his detestation of the man who says that. John Grey doesn't go far enough. He doesn't say it's about maintaining hegemony, as is - I have lately said - furious driving and 'playful' threats to murder (as when Tom says he'd like to get an Uzi and gun down some ethnic group). It's intimidation, it's semiconscious, and it's deep. I have begun to call it. What I've said is that whether it is intended to intimidate or not, my responsibility is to notice everything that has that effect on me. I felt myself being told to shut up. I mean I was telling myself to shut up. He'll get us killed if I keep saying what I think. He was ranting. I thought, if I let him go on, he will consolidate it, elaborate it, take this ground. So I yelled back. I yelled that I was not going to fight until we got off the road. He parked. That was good. But it didn't go all the way. There was another man in the parking lot and he couldn't stand it. I was still feeling myself silenced. We were driving toward home and I was thinking what I think when I'm frightened, which is that he is too irrational to be able to bear my actual self, I won't be safe if I speak, and that means it's over. I'll say what he wants to hear, he'll be happy, and then I'll leave. I had stopped talking, thinking these thoughts. We stopped at Ralphs and I ran in for ten minutes. When I came out with my paper bag there he was on the sidewalk saying he was sorry. We sat in the car under the parking garage fluorescents, after we'd looked at his cleaning job, and there was current in our bodies for the first time since he's been back. That beautiful flow of molten velvet. That's what it's been for. It's what tells us how we're doing. Was there current because his demon had been accepted     By both of us    YES And my resistance had been accepted by both of us    YES Sunday 6th Oh there was a raveling long flock above the channel in the marsh, that I would like to see again - brown birds and black and white birds, females and males I guess, partly sorted as they stood on the mud, mixing as they rose and blew, cross-sorting as they turned in groups, black birds become bright birds. A strong westerly greening the ocean, whitecaps to the horizon. Palm fronds on the roads. Clean blue over the city. We took the bridge - the extraordinary bridge - a flying leap across the bay. And blew along the silver strand thinking of Vic and Lou Leatherwood. Tom was a dragon today. We couldn't get close. The day was blowing and shining around us, and we had to leave it at that. No shining in us, not this time. Room 324 at the Maryland. He has a lot of channels and hardly any money after the rent. The fifty dollar rad flush is flooding out the front end of the block and it was the money he would have had to live on. I gave him back the 200 he gave me, because he'd spent his two months' savings on this and that. I mustn't take responsibility for the cost of decisions I am not consulted on - that's basic. But he's in the Maryland because I want him to be. But he should have been wanting to be in a place where I could be with him. But I am watching money and he is burning money - I shouldn't have to watch even more strictly because he burns money. But he was carrying me in the last two weeks. Gas.   volume 16 the golden west volume 15: 1998 august-december work & days: a lifetime journal project