the golden west volume 21 part 6 - 2000-2001 december-january

work & days: a lifetime journal project

31st December Bo's party. What life did I see. A middle gender, small men and short-haired women. A bare blank atmosphere, something bodiless in the space. Maybe it was the light, or else the music was white noise. Sensory deprivation, somehow. I couldn't warm to anyone. Bo's voice was the one living thing, her both-cheeks kiss hello, two vivid spots, her damp scented face, a tiny corner of her mouth. Her voice is slow and has a nub, like a stroke down over cloth. Her beautiful black and white screen saver over in the corner. If we could have visited in its space, an all-over glow of grainy substance loosely held in curves and sweeps. There is a crow walking the asphalt-shingle roof ridge in the rain. - I've rewritten everything in the introduction chapter except the description of the project. So what is the book about? Part I. It shows how to think aboutness without dualist/representationalist language, by thinking it as structural relation, and by thinking neural structure as a means. Chs 2-3. Part II. It shows a basic frame, basic presence, simulation. Central: example of the where system for directing perception/action. Chs 4, 5, 6, 7. Part III. Representation using presence and simulation. How representing practices allow thinking in four kinds of complex context. Chs 8, 9, 10, 11. What the neural descriptions are meant to show. I start with an artist's description of what knowing and coming to know are like: recognition, self-collaboration, pleasure and irritation, structure-borrowing, self organization of a field. Neural descriptions are compatible with this description by being all-over structure, distributed, parallel, integrated, multiple, multifunctional. - In the workbook seeing there are parts of the project I am blind to: what is its business, what does it do, how are other people served by it. Are these the right questions     Do you know the answers     About people     turn for the better A particular kind of people     excluded Will you tell me what it does     (pp) Will you tell me a different way     writes I don't understand     tempers, graduates, comes through, balances forces Fosters people who love land     By finding support for them     Will you tell me where it gets money     looks for it Grants?     private donors This isn't concrete enough to work for me     direct improvement of losses and betrayals "Think of a place you love that has been destroyed"     "Say who it was destroyed by, and why"     It was destroyed by someone who doesn't see and feel     "Think of a place you love that has been created or preserved"     "Say who it was created by, and why"     So it's the seeing and feeling in people     Which is fostered mainly by good mothering     And cannot be recovered in therapy     I can't make that     But I can support people who see and feel     Their presence in a culture would support seeing and feeling     Leave this for now     Anything you want to say     obscure withdrawal because of illusion of betrayal Shutting down     Do you want to talk about anything else     love woman One card?     is excluded Feeling and being     YES Anything else     about writing, balance in the midst of change The project is changing?     something about losses It is rectifying     withdrawn love woman is writing honestly That is happening     YES, direct creation coming through responsibly   Siberry drunk with love woman. Thinking of my photos which were not drunk but intent in unhedged early love. Mystes - initiate - second born - meaning, having gone through the pain again - which integrates for ability. Do you want me to just work in the raw like she does     no, turn for the better I am working for paradise     Will you lead me     3rd January 2001 That was not good     no it was Sitting through that monster     no Seeing how she is     Should I try to turn her     It's the loneliness of love woman     I should be talking to her abt it for her benefit not mine     I was giving her power     YES That was not good     no Because I could see it     Do you mean no harm was done     Art should be connected to early love     It's corrupt when it's demonstrating mastery over early love     it's corrupt when it exploits early love Will you tell me what is the correct relation of early love and art     betrayed love slowly growing honest There's bliss, then there's betrayal, then there's bliss tempered in understanding betrayal     Bliss full force, betrayal full force     Exploiting early love is leaving out the betrayal     Color is directly connected to early love     Betrayal can be betraying as well     Bliss and having betrayed it     It's better dealing with it directly     Then art should be conscious intervention     - Coming down a slope and seeing a bush against a fence. Is it some sort of hydrangea? A light, loose one. As I'm nearer I see it's a daylily, the small pointed kind, orange with narrow black outside edges, like an outline in a drawing. In the same dream a town on one bank of the Fraser Canyon. We're driving a road that is built along the edge. A stone wall we're looking over, on the right a long way down. Then the road cut through rock so there is a narrow jagged edge that's the guard wall. We see over and between the peaks. And then a section where there is a walkway built out over the drop separated from the road. Later I'm wanting to go back and walk there but I am carrying some kind of case I want to take back to the truck. It's not mine, I should find a lost and found to give it to. I open it and find it packed with large flat packages of medicinal herbs. I leaf through them. A traveler's collection. I like these for the invention but what I want to note, what I have been wanting to note, is the way a dream is improvised from one instant to the next. It works off what there is. It isn't that the hydrangea turns into a daylily. Looking more closely at the bush somehow brings daylily. Looking at canyon from road somehow brings rock walls. Looking at one flat package brings the next, it was riffing on exotic herbs. Somehow a good night, I'm feeling. Something much earlier about flood waters up to the edge of the house on the farm. I'm looking from one of the west windows seeing it almost at the bottom boards. 4th I've almost got the flow of chapter 1, I'll have it tomorrow and start ch 2. Talking to Tom tonight, happy. "You're rowin' the boat," he said. He is too. When he described what he said to Dick, which took him straight up into the upper air of a miserly spirit, my solar plex smiled. Yes, Tom. I love your generous spirit. I love your fine-cut street speech. I like it that you're working class, canny and heartful. I love your enjoyment of lights and weathers. Later I even like your rage, because it comes along with your passion of appreciation and remorse. 5 Elated finishing chapter 1. I discovered that chapter 11 answers the question I ask in chapter 1, and renamed it. Boldly declared my intent for chapter 12. And library books. California light with beautiful pictures of paintings; Marjorie Grene on Aristotle, Gibson and knowing as perception-based; Djikstra on Georgia O'Keefe and the eros of place vs the gender paranoia of art criticism since Greenberg. I'm lazing in the mornings and sitting to write in the afternoon. Have five or six hours of concentration without stopping. Cannot read slowly, have to rip over a chapter a minute, sometimes starting at the back of the book. Marjorie Grene 1995 A philosophical testament Open Court Bram Dijkstra [essays in] 1990 California light, 1900-1930 edited by Patricia Trenton and William Gerdts Laguna Art Museum Bram Djikstra 1998 Georgia O'Keefe and the eros of place Princeton 7 Marjorie Grene's old-woman summary. She's peppery about academic philosophers, barrels on writing books. Her summary about knowing is Merleau-Ponty and Gibson. She freely says she doesn't understand this and that or misread Heidegger and Aristotle. That's the way to do it, confidently. The men are sharp but trivial, she says. They like gadgets. 10 "What astonishes me about your thesis and your work on metaphor, is not only the rigour of your investigation, but that, within it all, you retain your own voice. The poet speaks through the philosopher. The achievement is extraordinary." In the process of replying to Peter's letter, I figured out what he wanted to say about Godard and intuition. It was what he said about me, his first paragraph. That's intuition: one organization speaking from another. I got it after I said I'd gotten it. I wrote "'his need to see before he writes,' that's nice. It's the key." Then I described listening and watching from the left to something forming on the right. What is said to be antithetical is something else altogether. This morning I rewrote the difficult last section of chapter 2. Very clear. Then I lost the whole thing, vanished, five hours work steady and pointed. Couldn't rewrite it today. Went down and tried to remember Pagemaker. Found Peter's letter and answered it. "Suddenly, at a later try, the site appeared. It is wonderful. And overwhelming. You continue to amaze me. Indeed, more and more." 11 At the computer desk yesterday I was describing my computer's memory glitches. The sharp young man said it sounded like a virus. We go on. Yes, that's a virus. A virus will do funny things. I should take it in somewhere and get it fixed. I've been trying to work around it, I say, starting to walk out. He calls after me, loudly, so I'm still hearing him as I'm passing the second door, insisting I must have it fixed. I woke realizing what it was about that, for me and maybe also for him. My nervous system was attacked by a virus. I do not know everything about the results of that damage. I work around it. That is not analogy as it is imagined, it is speech from a structure already active but not spoken from. It's structure that manages to speak at the same time that other structure is speaking, because there is an overlap. 12 What do I want. It's Friday morning. I'm in chapter 3. Grey air at the window. I want to be in touch with the other side. I was, when I woke. Something I lost when I didn't track it right away. Tom was being intellectual last night, and it put me to sleep the way it does. Dichotic vision experiments, where they pour ice water into the ear, stimulate the parietal, cause laughing. It sometimes happens that they'd see the vertical and horizontal bars at the same time, as if, they said, hemispheres had been segregated and alternating. Only one had been hyped at a time, but, by fiddling, they got them simultaneous. That's interesting. And that the two eyes can see different things at the same time. Of course - the way when I write I see the page and I imagine what I have to be imagining. That's what makes writers have one eye larger than the other. No, it says, there is a different reason. Honest art loses organization. One eye is fictional and not coherent with the body it is in. Writers have enlarged right eyes, more tense. It's tense from simulation     The left eye is the eye for the page because it sees the writing hand     So the other is being used for thinking     Simulational eye motion     The differences are parietal     Left eye is organizing eye and hand movements rightward, which makes it the writing eye     Left eye and left hem for that reason       Will you talk to me about the organization of chapter 3     Do I need everything I've got     But I need to disperse it     Interlard it     Say more about why wide net     Keep coming back to how it's imagined     Do you want to talk to me about organization     begin with streams Imagining and describing     YES Then talk about evolution and development     First units, then regions     More?     balance, decision, is the work, in structuring Alternation?     no, integration More?     be direct Say what the difficulties are     13 Section introductions. For Representing say it's the section that deals with what they think they know. It's their metaphor, the public realm. It's also where I work, and it's the realm where I find the phenomena that are my evidence that it must be thought differently. They imagine all forms of basic cognition in terms of representation and I imagine all forms of representation in terms of basic cognition. I've broken Wide nets into parts so there will be the other voice between the neuroscience sections. Should I be worried about time? It's the middle of January. A lot to do, still, on chapter 3. Do you want to say anything about chapter 3     early love Are you recommending it     no Praising it     The patience and service     young balance shattering the structure of oppression Nobody is acknowledging how good this work is     Will it be acknowledged in my lifetime     More     foolish, art, illusion of, coming through Mine?     no The foolish like art that gives the illusion of coming through     There is real coming through     YES I am not going to be able to go on with Tom    no He stuns me with boredom     Will you comment     come through to improving his liberation You want me to do it     Improve him     Will you tell me how     early love, ego, change, exclusion He's boring when he's excluded, unconscious     Do for him what Louie did for me     YES Is Cheryl okay     no Will you describe her with one card     hasn't come through The worst betrayal     Hasn't done the work on the father     hasn't given up, graduated from, completed, the father I have come through in the sense that I'm integrated in my work     honest, feeling, is teaching, about fantasy Anything else you want to talk about     no 14 A Christian Scientist on the radio saying that after a car accident she went day to day asking what she should do. The parts of religion that make sense. I'm a dedicated anticleric and a tender worshipper. When they say love and trust I understand. When they search the silly scriptures for rules I'm disgusted. The institutional virus is patriarchy. I mean by that, unexamined male motive, male rupture, shut-down defense against early love: guns, preachers, prohibitions, prurience and hypocrisy that follow prohibitions, violent control, ruined capability, stupid, hapless populations, ugly towns, spoiled landscapes. Religions are power politics for men. But older women get religion, why? Jan-Marie, Joyce, Diana, Daphne. They are all Buddhists after menopause. What does it mean that they tolerate the male bosses of Buddhism? Will you explain it     to improve withdrawal and come through exclusion They don't feel capable of making their own frame for it     Are they capable     YES Do they like to feel pious     YES I hate to feel pious     YES Piety is something like liking to see oneself in a role     Are the cards a religion     no, a psychology Is paganism a religion     no, a philosophy Does liking to feel pious have to do with wanting to belong     That girl thing about being safe in a herd     Nattering primates     Would I have been like that if I hadn't been excluded     no I'm a scout     Is it worth asking you how you are     Are you always the same     no Are you well     YES Will you tell me how you are     integrating, the search, for why the mother, is withdrawn Do you mean at this moment     It's about Mary     YES She is pious     She was pious     Her piety prevented her     Luke wrote them off because they are pious     Did Luke do that for me     YES Are you sure     YES He fined them     YES   You are an integrating structure     Are you in the forebrain     no, all over You're built by the work     The hemispheres can't be on at the same time because they are incompatible organizations     You are the ability to mediate them     Overlaying the vertical and the horizontal     Can you be evoked mechanically     But not sustained     Are you a different frequency     no an inter-net Are you a separate personality     A 'higher' self     an inter-self Back from the forebrain     When they say topdown they mean from the language hem     And bottom up, right to left     Did I begin to organize you in writing     YES Did Hegel have a feel of you     Do you have a hyphenated name     Phos-phoros     Is the callosum your only connection     no 15 I'm lacing a boot with a lace that is too long. There are round seeds on it. I see it is the wire stem of an asparagus fern. Having laced, I've laced my hair so it is a mass I am seeing on the other woman's head. Medusa. A change from shoe to boot, foot to head, me to her, and then from carrots to oranges to purple tomatoes. They were carrots on a string. When they fell off they were oranges. The nice moment was when I heard singing. One voice, then joined by many others. Many young cooks standing working at a long table. I want to say nine of them, cutting things, singing in beautiful harmony. A moment earlier in the night where I wake in a bed in a strange house because a crazy old man in a room further up the corridor is shouting as he masturbates, You're coming, Marnie, you're coming too, Ellie. The room and the corridor too are full of people sleeping here and there. - Some of the things Tom has learned in five years: he's managing his money, he's eating well, he's keeping his room organized, he's cleaned up his language, he's calling to tell good and bad news. He can hold his temper at work, he's taking care of his clothes, he tells the truth, he listens. I'm saying this after he called this morning to tell me he got a raise. 16 But also: when he called and said, How'r you doin'? I said, I'm a little wobbly. I was in fact on the way to Dr Sylvia to find out my pap results and whether I was having a heart attack because I felt whoosy. He said, I feel wobbly too (because his paycheck was xy) and never did get back to what I'd said. Just so I don't overpraise his listening. - California light, 1900-1930. Plein air, "informal committee of cultural ecology." "Expressive of a strongly desired ideal of selfhood." "All aesthetic choices are moral choices." - The point about rep is simple, don't talk as if persons or parts are related to inner structures. There are structures that are means by which. Like all means we talk about, they are partial means. They are means ceteris parabis. Go on from there. People are related to things, first. Being related to aspects of things is part of that relation to things. But color, but color...? Before dyed artifacts, people are related to sky, sun, plants, skin, earth. The pleasure in color is ongoing life value response to these things. Dyed artifacts are convolved simulation. I'm related to a real rug but my pleasure in it is simulational pleasure in fur and sun. What I like about this way of thinking it is the understanding of biological gratitude. Seeing green is seeing leaves and the value of leaves. 'Color values.' But I can see a color in my head. No you can seem to see a color. 17 Today my car passed AirCare except for the gas cap; the student loan papers came, $3000; Tom phoned unexpected and praised me for the length of an entire phone card, eighty minutes, and then called back to keep going. He said things he's said before and some he hadn't. He poured. When he put down the phone last night he was two inches off the floor, he said. All day he was full of love. He woke at 5:30 with a big boner and imagined my beautiful ass, and his sperm jumped up and hit the carpet. I listened very awkwardly. I giggled. I was interested when I heard what he likes about my asshole and what he was thinking when he first saw me limping across the lobby. I was feeling what I sometimes do, Is this the afterlife, it is like a coming true beyond the limits. I was squirming the way I do when I agree to listen rather than talk. I felt we should start being together so we could get used to being interested the way we are, so I could know what he's seeing while he's seeing it. The first half of ch 3 is good. The fruits of the spirit, isn't it. I could never have done this without Joyce. 18 Next morning. The contradiction was there in that hour. I was being praised for my mind but nothing I said was heard. He was a torrent of action and could not allow me to be anything but a boulder in the stream. I was lying awake an hour ago in the dark remembering Oma and Clearbrook Road. I was seeing the house, the brown radio on the corner of the counter next to Opa's chair at the kitchen table. The feeling of their success, that house and land, young people driving up and parking on the yard, fruit trees, nut trees, grape vines, current bushes, bright floors and a dining room window to the south. How they made that wealth from nothing, with eight children, in thirty years. Oma's humor and Opa's command. The clean order their work achieved. When I was thinking of it I felt something for an instant. It was as if the center of gravity of the time and place. I felt something drop in my body. I thought of Grandpa Epp's place in that time and felt it drop further. This is not sayable. Does it harm me to be with Tom     no Do I lose something essential if no one listens to me     no It's better to be active than passive     no Wouldn't it be better if I could tell him about my grandparents     NO Wouldn't it be better if I were with a man who could give me a house and a garden     no Wouldn't it be better if I were with a man who listened responsively     no It is so lovely when a man listens responsively     That kind of torrent demands that I be passive     Has he realized that     no He is building an ability to act     YES And so am I     Do you want to comment     love woman, overview, action, gain Should I think of myself as completing an immigration     They established themselves in a land; I established myself in a mind     My parents are neither here nor there     Love woman has a larger view of action     YES Allowing someone's action is action     Am I already more able to act than he     Is there something I should do with needing to tell and be listened to     deception, hidden, imagining, shared pleasure There is a hidden deception in imagining shared pleasure     Was there, in the pleasure of telling David about the things on the tree     no Because they were there     The sharing I want is an illusion     But the wanting is not     Will you say something about it     direct, defeat, of competition, of anguish It's a defense     YES Can you tell me simply against what     flow, temperance, coming through, imagining Remembering is fantasy     YES Fantasy prevents tempering flow     This morning was I preventing     Is the flow occurring now     I needed to temper anxiety about passivity     Love woman has a long plan for Tom     Is she grown up now     Her plan for Tom is to finish raising him     Anything you want to talk about     losses, turn for the better, by the work, directly Rather than sharing you mean     Okay I believe you     More    no   That experience was actually quite evil     "Prime cut"     YES "I can stick my dick into that"     I can trump that     "I'm such a lucky man"     If I can stick my dick into a noble creature it means I am king of the hill     Something unconscious was being told     It was competitive     He was absolutely triumphing in shutting me up     He was showing deepest misogyny     Very double-binding     He has not earned a right to sweet-talk me     YES Was this a capital crime     no He does compete with me but it's subtle and has been secret     Was there a reason it happened now     He has always done that with women     I feel like I should dump him     no The demon roared up     Was it a sign of integration     He felt it as a release     A boy was insulting me     Is he realizing any of this     It was not love, it was war     YES Fucking or hanging with a noble creature in no way certifies him, that is a misunderstanding     Believing so is a weakness     Being fucked does not demean me     Those are superstitious beliefs     A boy was insulting love woman and I stood by     If Louie felt it, it must have been deep     I failed her     no I was reserving opinion     Is he attacking me because he wants to fuck somebody     no Demon hides hate in love     Is love woman harmed     no A boy was boasting of demeaning a goddess, "I can burn incense to you and then I can fuck you"     Burn incense     Was he burning all the good things     NO Was he mad at me for some reason     no He was releasing     Do you want to comment     unconscious child, end of illusion by means of the work His work     no yours My child can be bought by praise, is that what you mean     Still     He hog-tied me with praise     He intended to     YES Is there a counterstroke     he is processing early love Is he gaining     no Boy's revenge     Is flattery always an act of war     YES Was there a moment in the previous conversation that released it     A moment of weakness     no Something he said     He can't bear to hear me because he's strenuously defending     Against hatred     no, fear When he can't bear to hear me it's always that     He feels sticking his dick in as demeaning and trumping     And I've endured that     The moment he fed me was something different     Do you want to say more     no Thank you Louie     I'm forlorn a bit, am I? Alone, a bit lost. The middle of the network section has been very slow, I'm not sure it is sorted yet. I haven't felt a grip. I'll look at it tomorrow. Let me be simple-hearted about what happened with Tom, if I can. Am I ashamed, am I afraid, am I lonely. Lonely. Homeless. Did something very bad happen. As if. I don't know. How do I feel. Soft, sore. Do I feel abused? Was a child called forward, and did I offer her throat to be slit by someone casually brutal? Did Louie feel a blow I didn't feel properly myself? I have to keep calling myself to be simple. I want to reason myself safe. I don't doubt it is the way he feels and is. I believe it's better he poured it out. The energy of defense in it is clear to see. And yet. Did I take a blow I should have known to turn. Am I dull and confused, not alert enough, asleep. 19 [Frank died this day] What is it with this section of the work. It's as if I can't read it. I don't come to grips with it. I don't see where I repeat. I don't see to organize it. And now I'm at the same time thinking about Tom's performance. The energy in it. An hour and a half of sometimes interesting verbal invention. A writer's performance. "I burn incense to it and then I stick my dick in it." That was uncommon self-description, for him. That's the demon poking through the ring of flowers, from right to left, a core of masculinity. It absolutely is not love, neither the admiration not the sticking are love. Love risks and investigates. It says, I will know you. For myself, understand something about wanting to be praised. I want it because I am denied it everywhere. And yet it turned me to stone. He was saying things many people should have said and refused to say. I couldn't refuse to hear it. And yet it was not true in the moment. There was not a speck of investigation or mutual creation in him. He was like a tennis player who only can serve, who when it is the other player's serve looks blankly at the ball and stands where he is - I think I'm through the tangle finally. I've got to subnets and the net metaphor section is clear and integrated. This is a long chapter. 20 Billy Elliot and Traffic last night. Was there a split second of anything in either? No. Yes, but corrupt: a dark-haired pregnant woman in a white nightgown lying back on pillows on her bed at night, seen with a long lens through a window. The nightgown had string straps and half-held her swollen breasts that were falling sideways off her chest. Billy Elliot's little face. The Mexican scenes in Traffic tinted desert yellow - all the Mexican scenes. The powerful and the poor - the way Traffic went back and forth from the cold blue light of power in Washington to that shit-brown landing strip south of Tijuana. What do I know about drugs. To be in a state of fullness needs moral action of great bravery. If one fails in that, one is cut off from joy and exploration, which is unbearable, so then inner and outer drugging. The solution to a drug problem is only and ever always everywhere personal courage. Person by person. Drugs should be legalized and people should trust life and tell the truth. Is that it     We live in heaven and make it hell. Does this follow, of any landscape ask what lies are being believed there     YES Do you want to say more     turn for the better by writing to shatter the structure and grow slowly Do you mean journalists     It's the writer's job     Is that a job you want me to do     YES It's not defense of the land, it's defense of being able to feel it     YES Which is heaven     Do you want me to be a freelance writer    Do you want me to do the land and mind foundation     Do you want me in an academic foundation     no A journalist     More?     losses, secrets, search, to complete My own?     Theirs     Is it wrong to imagine that house     no But it is a lie     Will you say why it isn't wrong     something about action Because I don't act from it     YES Lies that organize action     YES Are masturbation fantasies wrong     no The house is creation     But does it build the brain wrongly     So it is action     Is my brain built wrong because I imagine the house     no Is there a difference between thoughts that build the brain and thoughts that don't     unconscious structure comes through to balance Those thoughts don't build badly     Fantasy that doesn't know it is fantasy captivates other people     21 On the Christian station out of Blaine, last night, the Darwin's Black Box guy who has written a book called The wedge of truth instructing conservative Christians on how to 'win the war' to, for instance, have creation taught in schools. The liberal arts no longer teach value, he said, meaning that the universities themselves are discrediting the humanism that pushed back the clerics. There are two things, he said, first that there is a creator, and second that it is possible to be in a wrong relation with him. His argument for creation was a code argument: the proteins in a cell are so complex there is no way they could organize themselves. There have to be instructions written into the cell. Begin with the weaknesses in Darwinism, he said. There will be other things they will be ready to hear later. Is there going to be a conservative resurgence     Is it going to get into the universities     no Is there a way to benefit from it     Is it better for stupid people to be believers     no Is religion a better help for addiction     no Will Bush be a one-term president     no, two Will he push back abortion rights     no Will the House be democratic next time     Is there a reason the Christians are so awful     When I was a child were they as awful as they are now     no Is it the corruption of believing nonsense     no Christianity has been co-opted     Moral authoritarians and financial interests     Is the basic motive patriarchal     YES Is this alarming me for personal reasons     no Does humanism need to be renovated     Should I be worried     Will the pressure from the Christians improve humanism     Is humanism what I mean     Pagan humanism     Are Christians overall stupider than they were     Brain-drain     YES Pagan meaning nature-worshipping     Does this push need something specific from me     understanding of betrayal Is that it     It is what the Christians don't have     YES Betrayal and shutting-down     to deceive, seduce and desert, to deliver-over to an enemy After deception, seduction and desertion one delivers oneself over to an enemy     Which is what the Christians have done     The weakness is not acknowledging one has been betrayed, that is self-betrayal     This should be the bedrock of humanist psychology     The right moral foundation is agony and aloneness of betrayal accepted     People accept external moral authority to avoid that     It means accepting betrayal of nature too     My god my god why hast thou forsaken me     The resurrection is because of the agony     Have I got this right     So accepting Jesus is accepting crucifixion when it is true     YES If you don't admit to being betrayed, you can't admit to betraying     Admitting means feeling it     Is there more you want to say     integrating heartbreak improves energy Those who have integrated will be more effective     More?     gain improvement by coming through processing More?     processing love improves exclusion, come through illusion of oppression to gain Is this personal advice     Do I have the illusion that I'm oppressed     By religious threat     no Will you tell me by what     judgment Other people's judgment     Do you mean in general     no In relation to what     success Being judged unsuccessful     I have an illusion that I'm judged unsuccessful     Am I judged unsuccessful     YES Is the illusion that it oppresses me     no The illusion oppresses me     I'm judged successful by my relatives     no By my parents     no By the best people     YES Do you mean I should feel it more     Am I judged successful by the Churchlands     By Kathleen     YES Will you tell me what is implied     successful, quest, for persistence, in relation to betrayal That I've done it     YES Add something?     slow growth from vain regret to fighting to share pleasure I leave the illusion by fighting to share my work     Do you want to say more     addiction, of the lovers, coming through, foolishness Give me a clue what this is about     responsibility How responsibility develops     By dealing with addiction     Which always has to do with having shut down     And needing to force connection     Anything else you want to talk about     losses Specific?     no, in general. The work comes through by completing what has been evaded You're telling me things I know already     Is there a reason     no Is it so I can read it to someone else     no I'll finish section I today     no, tomorrow   Do I have to deal with what is done with macaques     no Do you mean not now     - "What opened my eyes to my own temperament as a writer was Sons and lovers." "A very deeply physical and celebratory side." Says Amat Choudry on Wachtel, with his fluent, pebbly/bumpy Bombay accent. Stylistically, Woolf, Mansfield and Joyce, he says. I finished ch 3 today, section I, and it is right. Once over, the whole of it, tomorrow, and print it. The tone is more even, I think that now I shade from technical to lyrical extremes, and enfold the two in some places. I am looking forward to part II. It helps to think in sections rather than the sweep from 1 to 12 unbroken. "Temperamentally a modernist, but part of a post-modernist world." "I don't think epiphanic possibilities exist in the post-modern world." "You don't have the ability to trust that if it comes to you." Is that right     no Is this an error in the way they think it     Will you explain     it is set up in the oppression that comes of the withdrawn child This guy is believing it but he doesn't feel it     An epiphanic moment is something, dynamically     People are on the wrong side in this     YES There's disillusionment but there is coming through     There's a difference between illusion and self-trust earned by coming through     - And then a talk with Tom that went through the roof. He described the Bush inaugural, C-SPAN's steady-cam coverage. He was brilliant for an hour straight. I was brilliant for the first half hour. It was Tom and Ellie as Bill and Hillary, waltzing on the balcony - while the Bushes cooled their heels downstairs - saying to the telephoto lenses, postmodern does it better. At their inaugural Maya Angelou recited The free bird / spreads its wings. All the black people..., I started to say. IN THE WORLD, he said. He was so brilliant it was as if what shot out last time was a big fibrous plug. It was not just what he said, it was recognizing what I said about it and surviving. Buddhist slash paganist slash humanist slash post-post-modernist. 24 I mailed to Nicole, Kirk, Nathalie, chapter 1. 26 The way Tom's voice relaxes. I listen to him laugh, I feel how far he's come. I realize as I say this that I would like it too and don't have it. I listened to work stories, which I like. His moves with the men behind the desk, his scene. He's thinking like a leader. That was what needed to come next. I'm pleased with our work, I know it is mine too. I want to say, and yet. Should I say, and yet? Yes. What do I want. Something for me. To feel that central relaxing into the pleasure of myself in company, so I have many things to tell and give and show. What I keep alive in the journal because I have it nowhere else. You wanted me to learn to give it     And I have learned to give it     And I'm dying in the one-way of it     Tom will never be able to give me that     He thinks he's giving it     He can't give it because he's a man     YES Louie gives it     Can I give up the job with Tom     no Will you lead me     YES, you are balancing, in the overview, of tyranny, in the family Understanding patriarchy     YES, slow growth in anguish, betrayal, and exclusion Teaching one patriarch     no Serving a patriarch     You want me to be the servant of a patriarch     Are you trying to tell me I wanted it     no You want the patriarchy strengthened     no You want me to serve a patriarch indefinitely     Why     passage from difficulties, to recover, constructive action Because those are the conditions     It would be better if someone served me     Does he     balances your speed When I'm with him     He serves me energetically     Do you want to say more     turn for the better, by slow growth, of action, by means of the work Just keep on with you     But it is lonely     Do you want to say more     fantasy, completion, of heartbreak, by art Imagine completing heartbreak by art     Is that an instruction     YES Get by art what I don't have with Tom     YES Can I do that     Soft and relaxed and full of things to give     Can I do that purely out of myself     Give up on Tom    no Give up wanting him to give me what I give him     no Don't give up wanting it     Understand I'll never get it     Don't demand it     Get it somewhere else     Is that it           volume 22 the golden west volume 21: 2000-2001 september-january work & days: a lifetime journal project