the golden west volume 23 part 5 - 2001 october-november

work & days: a lifetime journal project

12 October 2001 Rumpled and pissed off about the drag of this time. Serious rain. Clammy chill, aches. Yesterday I did no work. I had a choice of letter to Maggie, MA notes, chapter 6. Nope. But nothing else, house arrest. What's my question. I've given up flow. I've traded it for a project, two projects if Tom is one. I was good at flow. I still am when I cast off. Last time was years ago, Cannon Beach. Does it mean something that it is Frank and Janeen who have died? I'm remembering flow probably because of Laura Sewall, who describes an instance of significant time in a camping trip alone. Does all this mean soul has died out of my life? Yes. Is it irreversible? No. Is accomplishment the enemy of soul? No. So there's something wrong in the way I'm doing it. No. What is needed for soul? The Work. So flow is only one kind of soul. No. Where there is soul there's flow. Could there be flow within working house arrest? Yes. Do you want to comment?    coming through, action, community creation When what is withdrawn comes through into action and community creation     Live like an artist     Is it possible to commit to projects and still live like an artist     Paying attention to dreams, impulse, setting out in faith     Is Being about good     YES So much of what I do with you doesn't take effect    no Will you tell me in what sense it takes effect     crisis, completion, coming through, to overview Should I be putting more pressure into work     On a day like yesterday should I force     no, release Is it war tension     13 A woman wants to talk to me about my work. She shows me paintings. They are her versions of my pictures. One of mine has a queen or empress on a beach with a fire offshore on the water. Hers has a lot of complication around the queen, houses. Another of mine has a sort of path up the middle of the picture. Hers is a slashed gully. I'm doing well with Maggie. She signed her letter fondly. The last piece, she wears her, is at her experimental edge and at her personal edge. She's trusting me. There's a but. It has to do with an uncertainty I have about me. I don't know what it is - do I? Something about her I can't see? I see her rectitude, valor and talent. But I have a blind spot about her which is a blind spot about me? Something that's wrong with her? No. I'm jealous of her. I'm jealous of the attention she's getting from me, which I was starved for. Am I jealous of her freedom? No. Is she more gifted and realized than I was at that age? It says no. - Which I am starved for. She is getting what I don't get even now. There's more? Yes. Is that getting into what I'm writing to Margo? Yes. Do I also have a blind spot about what she's feeling? Yes, excluded. Physically unacceptable? Yes. If I see that will something change? Yes. What? Something about masculinity, the masculinity of the excluded woman. We both feel our girl parts are not wanted? Yes. Gosh this is so tricky. Now the MA commentary. Big reluctance to send it out. Exactly this reluctance has been my shackle. What is it? Can I undo it here and now? No, it says. Is it rational? No. Is it conditioned? Yes. By my father? No. By the church. Yes. Because I'm female. Yes. It was done by example. Yes. Is forcing myself the answer? No. Is it fear? No, just prohibition. Will you suggest how to deal with it     structural integration of action and love woman Say more     turn for the better, excluded child's heartbroken intelligence More?     no That's it     Is there an instruction in it for my present case     Is it like a spell     I don't know how to apply it     I did it with Leaving the land at great cost of fear     Should I do it that way     no I want to put my head under the cover     Practical suggestion, one card     something about masculinity Talk to my inner man     Ask him to do it     YES On my behalf     After that I lay down and what I remembered was the moment in Berkeley, Nyingma, when the man whose name I've forgotten offered to let me ring the bell. I didn't take it firmly and ring all up and down the house. I rang one timid little thunk and gave it back. Oh, sad. I imagined a tall strong man holding open a gap in a wall while I pass through, sitting on the platform behind a young woman speaking passionately and eloquently from the pulpit at La Glace. His close attention holds off the discomfort and refusal of the room. Having come to that vision I felt large, strong and quiet and fell asleep. 14 Conspiracy theories are the sophistication of the ignorant. That's Tom. 15 Is it good     no Will you tell me what's wrong with it    too defensive It comes across as being about me     16 When I was sending Leaving the land to Margo, Lise and Danielle my hands shook on the keys. I sent the MA notes too. Have done almost nothing with ch 6 this week. - I plug in the long phone cord one last time before I go to bed. It's 11. There's an email from Maggie. This is what she says: tell me everything. tear me up. i love hearing from you. 17th A man addressing a panel on CBC, upset, Middle Eastern accent, says why will no one acknowledge the truth, that the promulgation of US economic interests is terrorism. He gets cut off. Michael Enright sweeps on to another questioner. What should the answer have been. The notion of terrorism is rhetorical in the circumstance. Economic imperialism brings civilian deaths by the million, and instills distress in civilian populations. It disrupts cultures. Generation by generation traditional peoples are not able to live in ways that suit their bodies and their existing forms of intelligence. Their environments are ruined. At the same time, empire opens the small societies and makes minds of new kinds. The minds we are exist because empires rode out roughly into foreign land. So what should we say. This rebellion against empire, empire's reprisal, conflagration contained or running toward overthrow, rebels dreaming of an empire of their own, millions dying either way, ease and fine minds in the heart of empire, devastation on the fringes. - What happened today - shopped at Ed's Linens with Louie - she bought a thousand dollars worth of goose down duvet, new pillows, Egyptian cotton sheets. Second thing, after her yoga class we went to the Arts Club Theatre to see Ursula Le Guin. She was smaller than twelve years ago, holding the rail to bring herself down the stairs, and better dressed in black pants and a velvet jacket in bright colors. When she began to read she was slow to find herself there, in the story. My dream last night. I'm among people called to the welfare office. They've called us to tell us to get work, but I'm thinking all I need to do is tell them I've got a job. I'm with the young social worker. I say proudly that I have work and it's a good job, I'm a professor at a college in Vermont. She turns and leaves. She's bitter with me, disappointed. I had something else in mind for you, she says over her shoulder. - What? What? - Something more spiritual. - I'm doing that too! You have no idea, I'm doing that too, I shout. I quailed at the look of the people in the audience at the Arts Club. The faces seemed baroque to me, one after another, so many, each so thick with oddity. 18 It's raining, mid-morning. What there is today, tomorrow, the weekend, next week. Oh get ch 6 done. The letters are evening work, but every evening. What I did today, organized the grammar section, swiftly. Worked all, all day. 19 Tom was in a lather of anxiety telling me about meeting Oscar's mistress. He was rote, praising me, running speeches I've heard. It must have been reactivating, I suggest. He gallops on. I can't bear being praised in that spirit. I want to go. He repeats his sexual plan for me, which betrays his conviction that it is I who am not, but may become, by his gift, sexually vital. - As I was in the midst of this paragraph he had to phone back and give the speech about how he plans to make me over so I will get my ya-yas, so he will get his ya-yas - a phrase I loathe and don't want written in my hand. There was something yucky about that     no Did he fancy her     Was the backseat thing meant to attract her     Was he raving reactivation     Is it mostly fear     Do we need to have a talk about sex     We are not each other's sexual types     He wants to turn me into something he's known     I've given up hope of turning him into what I want     And it's made me give up hope with sex     I don't think it's gonna work     Am I right     So should I break up with him    no Please comment     the work We're there for the work     no Work at it     Yuck     no Why bother     to complete partial loss of despair about men To despair more    no To feel despair more     To get to a true despair with Tom     Is Tom's despair abut wanting Lorie     YES He still wants her     Has she contacted him     no My true despair is that he wants her     You mean true in the sense of accurate     My true despair is that he's holding back     YES He pretends to have sex with me     He's deliberate     Should I call him on it     The more he plots and plans the worse it will be     Tell him my sexual despair     no Tell him to find another lover     Let the other lovers break us up    no Tell him we should stop being faithful     Let love woman come to life again     He wants a bad woman so bad it ties him up in raving anxiety     He's all in knots trying to talk himself into wanting me     He thinks it's a secret from me     He got mighty burned by a bad woman     It would be good for him sexually to have one     But it would take him to booze and drugs and chaos and early death     And I am paying the price for his conflict     YES He actually does not fancy me at all     I did fancy him but he beat me off     Is this the rock-bottom truth     Am I living a lie     Is living this lie what's making me ugly    no Does he know what I'm thinking     YES Is there a solution to his conflict     Sentence?     acting to complete coming through with Ellie What he's doing    no One card to say how different     processing Both say what we really want     Explicitly     Without expecting to get it     Stop being mentally faithful     Want what we want     Is that what you mean     You mean we have to be where we are     Stop trying to manage each other     Say, I'll be with you even if you don't love me     His secret is that he doesn't     He does and he doesn't, and the not loving is a secret     Was that dream about the dirty room about this     Is there more you want to say     look for the structure of partial loss of coming through With him     no, yourself At this moment     I am not coming through at this moment     What the dream said about me     The something about me that plays along with his use of me     He knows how to hook me to his purposes     By praising my wisdom and intelligence     Mainly that     Does he believe it     But the question is why I need to hear it     YES Is that the dirtiness     My need for flattery     Because it's part of my defense     It is my defense     The people with whom I feel clean don't flatter it     Will you lead me     something about Tom Okay     look for slow growth of your reserve in relation to early love The course of increasing reserve with him     Go back and look at the whole history     no I believe I'm smart enough so he can't harm me     He keeps pulling that scarf out of his sleeve     Don't let him ever flatter me any more     Whenever he flatters me it means he's covering something     Is this the crux of it     YES Now I want to dump him     Should I     He plays me like a naïve     Now I'm biting my nails     I'm disgusted     He plays me     YES To cover his crimes     Are they true crimes     no His standards are unrealistic     Does he think wanting what he wants is a crime     I'm off the point     The point is my filthy room     Is there something I should do    feel what you're feeling Disgusted     no Taken     no Angry     20 I felt dirty after that conversation, and this morning dreamed I had moved into a room that had not been cleaned since the last tenants, that maybe had never been cleaned. There were toys everywhere, small bits of furniture, crumbs, spilled salt or sugar, a floor that had never been vacuumed. I decided to clear one side of the room and put all the junk on the other. I cleared a table to put in front of the window, noticed there were two double beds, one on my cleared side of the room and one on the junky side. My cleared side, the right side, was still very dirty. As I lifted toys from the far right corner I got sperm on my hand, that morning's sperm probably, still wet. Woke disgusted. There had been something earlier about bunches of keys. Golden West keys, other keys. I was worried I didn't have the keys I need. I felt dirty after talking to Tom because I was being used by his conflict, always that huge energy of fear and fascination about bad women and what they release in him. He swears up and down how he loves and wants me and will do whatever it takes, and what he is really doing is praying that I will continue to save him from the abyss of the bad woman. That that amount of energy is needed to talk himself into wanting me creeps me out. Speaking personally. Speaking as the wiser self, speaking to the wiser self, what I'm saying is that we're getting ready to take it up where we left it last visit, which was at an exhausted dejected spot. What's going to have to happen is that we stand where we are. I will have to say it again, I'm here even if you don't love me. We have to be able to want what we want. There won't be time to do much this visit. He has to be able to want what he wants and trust himself not to go off the rails. There's something I have to do too. What is it. I have to be able to be angry and disappointed, not shut down. Is that it? Yes. 21 Tom: Sex addict, alcoholic, drug addict. I like to, I will do it. Who I am without any varnish. Another side of life that is more important. Lost all respect for myself. I was going down fast. Have an adventure and see what happens. I feel I need to do something that's at least of some quality. I've never liked anybody. Women have infuriated me beyond belief. I'm not the type of person you should be with. I'm a dangerous man. I'm looking at you and I'm seeing a good person. I've had a lot of experience. You please me deeply. What I've always wanted to do with you is never damage you, to take care of you. What is erping you out is you have a rough man, you don't have a good man. You're very capable of saying I'm done. I am the same kind of person. I don't want to get stuck with this. Friends, to the exclusion of sex. You're a very cold person. You're up in your head. You're in the thought process of emoting. You don't have it. You're very focused on your goals. You think the nobleness of your goals You have a lot of abstract things about sex that have nothing to do with juice. You are very naïve and self-possessed. That's how I see you. What I want to do with you is get you where you can't go. All your men have fucked you over. They are no longer in your life because they didn't have what it takes to stand up to you. You're very formidable. I know that that's what you need. The things that I like so much about you. You have a lot of problems sexually. You're very afraid of men. Your work is what you're doing to protect yourself. Come in my hands and I'll protect you to have this kind of fun. It just needs a little loving. You're afraid to have a man love you. I am a beautiful person. I am very much of an adept. I see people. Your spirit is the purest spirit that I've known. I've never seen you do anything chickenshit. (E: I like it better when you fight with the negatives than with the positives.) I'm trying to fill the hole in me with something. An escape artist. I've had great pride. The tools of my escape are my addictions. I need to know how to handle the drugs because it's part of my escape. And then I need to put my pants on and then I need to leave. Lorie never fucked lackadaisically. Fucking should be some strenuous thing done as kinkily as possible. I miss that. You are a very reserved person. Your reserve is so impersonal. You are not an affectionate lover. You don't loosen up. You don't forget that you have body tension. A very conscious blow job. There was no abandon in it. No kittyish sensuality. Break Ellie down to a little kitty cat. That's what I live for as a man. Man bringing woman satisfaction. I would like to get gurgling feedback. That would make me happy. Unabashedly intimate, unreservedly trusted each other. This guy is never going to fuck me over. (E: It has to be starting with whatever is true.) Is this as much as needs to be said about it     Could I get into it     Read books?    no Do it deliberately the way he does     no Imagine doing things to him     Are you sure     Do it when I don't want to    no I never do want to    no Will you comment     something about action Enough?     no, improve organization and completion of action, something about my whole relation to action The phases of action     We had a strong rumble, strong on both sides. I called him out, he spoke with energy on both sides of his mouth, though not at once. I spoke my truth, but carefully, with balance. I don't understand this though - why he thinks it will hurt me to hear what he has to say about how he sees my limits. I felt more and more pleased and energized. I think what he sez is sort of true, not completely true, but even if it were true it would say I've triumphed over victimhood. I'm relieved, hearing a big bossy man say it. It means I can look after myself. Ah but. He's saying I'm defended with him. I have to be defended from him. He would take advantage if I wasn't. He wants me defended and undefended both. Here it is a little plainer than it has been. I do have to be defended with him. He wants it both ways. He wants me defended except for convenient moments in bed. I do have to be undefended to have the kind of sex I like. I am never going to be able to be undefended with him. If I stay with him I am never going to be able to have the kind of sex I like. So here are my questions: does not having undefended sex harm my spirit? Does it harm my health? Does it make me less beautiful? If those answers are no, I can say it is worth giving up sex, if I have something else I want. How does it feel to say this. Centered, valiant, and empty at the core. At this point people turn to an imaginary love. Do you have a different solution?     struggle against the structure of binding yourself in relation to men Be undefended?     no, learn a defense that is not self-constriction Can I?     Is there only one?     justice, pleasure, action, persistence Is this a list     Am I doing this already     no Persist in justice, pleasure and action     Do you mean this in relation to sex     no In relation to men     A style of interaction     no A relation to myself     Will you point this     it's about improvement Be more just in my sense of them     Look for pleasure    no give pleasure Be more like a hooker     Be more willing to give pleasure     Be more aggressive     no, more generous You mean proactive     Resentment beep beep beep     Tom phones and says, I'm having a good day in my heart with you. I have been really talking. 22 RAWA. Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. "We are the enemy of the Taliban, the enemy of the jihadis. We are the enemy of all fundamentalists and fanatics. We are no one's agents." 1977 in Kabul, founded by a poet, Meena. The solution to jihad is to support Muslim women to do it. 23 [College] writing last night, Maggie's Level 6 memo, Ida's packet 3 letter. I worked until 10:30, elated. 24 As I was going to bed last night, the door - here I'm pausing realizing that in the twenty-some years I've written journal in this house I've never mentioned the device there is on the door, not a knocker, not a bell, a sort of grater that is wound and rasps - there was a grating at the door and from the top of the stairs I saw David's tall thin shadow on the glass. I went down and let him and his bike into the hall. He'd come to bring me a book. We had a half hour's visit in the kitchen, he in the green chair and I showing him the California acorns, the bit of white sage, the rose geraniums, the architecture book. As I was seeing him to the top of the stairs after, he was looking sideways, with pleasure I knew, at the blue and white and yellow in my bedroom, in light from the California lamp with its lit red shade. I was feeling how much I've liked this friendship, the boy/old man who is my best companion in this kind of pleasure, who when he visits never stays too long. 25 Finished chapter 6, I guess. Almost finished Michelle's letter, which is the last for packets sent. That leaves tomorrow for figuring out how to approach Gabriele. Margo said Blessed if I know how you do it, but you always get it right. The way my eyes sting when she praises me makes me feel I have not had enough praise. I keep calling up the praise notes and reading them again. 26 No, it means it's praise for deep defense and sez it's working. I love to always get it right. There is that centered energized writing energy, that's juggling knives, really. Watch me. I could wing one of these your way if I had a mind to. This day I'm planning a move. That's another feeling, fragile. - He's out of money. He hasn't phoned Budget. He accidentally erased Netscape and hasn't got it back, so he doesn't have email. He hasn't got my bike out of storage. Said he was saving money, had nearly a thousand and three months later is broke. What am I feeling besides angry. Sore, sore. So deprived and untouched and even where I'm going I won't be able to open my heart and be safe and let down and be simple and cry. I don't trust any of my friends. There's no one who can enclose me. Joyce is dying. I'm standing alone everywhere. I'm pouring attention into my students and Maggie is the only one who is giving anything back. Is complaint and resentment the beginning of heart?       There's no point being with a man if he can't evoke love woman     no It's another task     Learning action     But what about love woman     she's feeling But I don't feel     NO Am I feeling accurately    no I want to be with a man who brings out love woman    no Will you say why not     complete the coming through of love woman into (empress) More about (empress)     organize, judgment, writing, losses Do you mean mind and land work     That's what I get instead of love woman     YES Does it mean love woman dies     I become a functionary    no An organizer     no A writer     no A philosopher     Ugly like Lorraine Code     no I'm much more ordinary than I was    no   Do you want to say a bit about Tom on this trip     My assignment     act like a wife to complete shattering the structure What structure     integration Shatter integration     His     no Mine    no Ours     Will you say in what sense     act like a wife not indecisive Say I'll move and all that     Will that smoke him out    no Can my car make it down there one more time     Plug away at sex     no Skip sex     no Well, what     be bound up You're joking     San Diego, 30th A new Le Guin. I'm in Nora's front room, in a down sofa, with sun straight in from a spot over the palm tree. After a while I'll go dig in the front. It's quiet. I'm here. Not mad at Tom, not shut down. Appointment on Monday with Gabriele. Feeling Nora's house with Le Guin's offworld view in me. She is writing about American cultural imperialism by writing a planet colonized by corporate tech-think and coffee. In this house filled with miscellaneous stuff bought on impulse of nostalgia, ah, it's sad. What is there to want in that rusty pitcher, those scarred columns, the false mantle, all those molded candles sagged to ugly lumps. The stuff says family roots but none of it is family roots. Nora is using patriotism to sell casinos. Woody Guthrie, This land is your land. There's an American flag on the fence I will be digging next to. I worked six hours yesterday and made order in the garden's back room that had been junked over, swarmed with weeds. I am an observer-employee. And something else. UCSD faculty club, 5th November It's Monday, counting down - how am I - not yet strong - tentative - frightened at heart - of what - of not being my best, not being able to show my best - I'm tired, slow - intimidated by UCSD - I feel pretentious offering what I really do have to offer - o larger one - steady me - I feel dependent on her good grace - I love UCSD - I love the intellectual climate - I love the work being done here - I haven't been exercising this mind - I'm afraid it won't come - the implications of the work being done here haven't been absorbed into the approach to interdisciplinarity - there's Pat C looking tall and beautiful on the way to the department - what will she look like, Gabriele - I'll know her by her cheekbones - implications for unifying epistemology - what science and art are - structured bodies, world, cultural 'structure', practices - Gleick, Keller - neurophilosophy - cog linguistics - are integrated or segregated in a structured body - 6 Clayton's pies. Finally alone with nothing to do. I earned US$500 at Nora's, spent $100 on the car, $240 on the ticket. Broke even, yes. Made a garden. Bought some Doc Martins. Yesterday the moment passing Paul C's table in the faculty club, he put out his big warm hand and I grasped it at the thumb so it was a warm strong brotherhood clasp not a handshake. Nice to see you, dear, he said. I was having lunch with the 6th College provost. Pat and Paul having lunch together speaking energetically. She looks tired. He looks gigantic and alright. Gabriele. Pretty, brown eyes behind glasses, a living mouth. Wearing non-power clothes, an embroidered coolie jacket. She manages by sympathetic listening. I want to work for you, I said. She showed me her estate, a dull rectangle of grass with two ugly picnic tables on one corner, and a deep beautiful canyon. What there's room for - a salvia collection certainly, a dry collection, Australian collection, South African. She wants ordinary people to want to come. I have a commission if I want one, I think. Volunteer. Sages Craft Gardening. Land reclamation. Land study. She's working on this. What is this land. What mind does it make. Institute for mind and land. Congeneris Institute for Mind and Land. I have something she wants. A sense of what it was. A sense of what it is. What would be the inspired thing. She likes Santa Ysabel, she knows Black Canyon Road, she likes salvias. I looked black and bright, I think, in my new power clothes. There were men at tables here and there, academic men, looking at me. They can probably see that Tom had me lying along his legs, poking his finger into my bum crooning sweet things I couldn't hear down at my end. That was Sunday morning. 7 It's the going-home day. Another half hour in the lobby of the Maryland. Yawning. Someone washing the hotel canopy with a hose. White sky. Huge black Trent in white shirt and tie standing looking at the street through plate glass. Tile floor washed. A dried-blood hotel marble baseboard around the door. Palms packed in spaghetti straw. A murmur from the TV room, janitor speaking to maid in Spanish. Fire engine's squawk and scream on Market Street. Yellow cab passing the theatre on 5th. My arm and shoulder muscles still hurt. Can still taste coffee from Clayton's. I'm wearing the dark red long sleeved tee from Ralph Lauren. Black silk tailored pants, new docs. Tom and I have been natural as days. We had half an hour this morning before he had to begin his work glide. He woke on the floor and found me sitting on the chair by the window. This woman wants a poke, he thought. If so, I didn't know it, but I was willing to be nice. Twenty minutes later I was coming, with little squeaky screamy sounds I have never heard from my mouth. Hearing them, Tom got very solid and went poke poke poke and came too. We were pleased with ourselves. I am pleased now, up the small of my back and into my shoulders. We were lying together last night after he'd read Valleyview-Whitecourt Cut-off 1959. I was utterly in love. He was my right man, my heart companion, my best good fortune. I had the timid feeling that comes with no reserve. I was afraid it was too good to last. I was afraid I wouldn't know what to do with the next moment. He was looking beautiful. He had been thanking me for letting him come out with his little whines and doubts. I have had no hard time with his hard times. I call his bluff easily without Vancouver 8 Nov - At that moment Nora in her green car arrives at the curb. I give her the invoice, map, plant list. She gives me an envelope with US$880. Then we talk as she drives. How much do you need? A hundred thousand? Two hundred? A million? Kumeyaay Indians, she said, moved from inland, the Cuyamacas, to the sea. The bands are donating large amounts of money. They'd be glad to buy respectability at the university. We're at the airport curb talking on. Nora will take photos, do research, she says. 9 Still milling between here and there. Louie's house last night. The lamp I brought her. Glass candlesticks. Whiskey glasses. Louie whining that she isn't happy. The book is dead, she complains. Is there a reason Louie is refusing to work through? She's afraid she'll have to give something up. Some defense. When I came past the National Guards in camouflage standing with M16's into the greeting zone of the airport there was Tom looking very thin-faced and evasive - not quite the word - like a man without character. A schuft. Shifty. His hug is stiff. I don't mind. We go off together and rent a car. While we're gassing it up I have a generous impulse and go over to stand with my shoulder against him. We're just two lonesome pilgrims, I say. He gives me a kiss. More than one. We drive, drive, drive out to the parking lot at OB. Walk around the corner of the cliff, where homeless kids are sitting to see the sunset, huddled with a puppy. The tide is high, waves are jumping the rocks onto the path. We go home to downtown and stop for food at Super Junior's. Tom is broke. I lend him money. We go to his room, which is in beautiful spare order. He has got rid of most of his bits. I am lying looking into his face. I feel bold and he feels shy. I ask for kisses. He lets himself sink into them. He gets to my nipples so I am in deep pleasure. In the morning I reward him by saying Go for it. A fast hard poke just for him. We drive to Santa Ysabel, buy food. Take the Mesa Grande road and enter Black Canyon Road from the far end. There's a place above the canyon where he sits eating cheese on a rock, thinking of the thousands of years the place has been unchanged, and I walk up and down the road plucking bits. His feet hurt. There are small birds looping through the canyon's dip. Do I see rock paintings on the far side? We drive slowly on. We're peaceable. Street pandemonium at night. Monday I'm out to Nora's. Stay the night. Talk to her about the garden. I've found Ursula Le Guin's second-latest at the PB library. In the morning before the house is awake I see a dove on the wire in California early light. I had worked all day in the back. Pippy lay sleeping on the wall nearby. I cleared the slope. Tuesday Nora said go ahead and take the Hallowe'en stuff off the front. I found the water lines, called Tom and said I need a worker. Wednesday I brought Jim Vincent back with me, helped him with the front, weeded the roses. By this time I was aching at night. In there was Tuesday night when the car overheated and I came home worried and interrupted Tom's plan to have me watch Michael Jordan's comeback. He got stressed riding round and round with me looking for parking. Was tyrannical with me and then with the black man who came to beg money by offering information about the parking meter. I interfered with his triumph over the poor creature. He was enraged. I was firm. It took longer than I expected, but when he was recounting the episode from the beginning I was thinking, now he will soon be able to let it go. He was back to moaning that the man had disrespected him. I towered up righteously. The word is righteous not angry, though I was speaking with force. I said when the black man showed him the tiniest disrespect it is a hanging crime and when he snaps at me for remarking on parking spots it is nothing. He folded suddenly, laughed, gave it up, said he liked my spirit. That was Tuesday night. Wednesday and Thursday Jim dug, I cleared the sides and front of the garden. Friday I had off. Came home at noon and found Tom sitting. He'd quit his job. We tried to go to Buena Creek to get mushroom compost: gridlock on 5. Went home through Encinitas. Sunset over the waves. When we'd got the truck back to Nora's I said, You take the car home and I'll sleep here. Went straight to bed at 6. In the morning Nora brought me a Starbucks latte. We drove to the nursery at Buena Creek and found a cassia covered with yellow flowers for the end of the bed. Some salvias, a white buddleia. Also went to Walter Anderson's and Mission Hills. At the end of the day sneaked into Eliz's garden. I wanted to see the cutleaf elder. There was the cherokee rose looking unexpectedly beautiful. Nor was tired in a way I've never seen her. Tom came and picked me up just when I had phoned him. He'd spent the day at the Cove thinking about his next move. We drove a convoy home. I drove the car back to the rental place. He followed in the truck. Sunday morning we drove the truck to OB, did laundry while we had breakfast at the Little Chef and while I shopped for Louie on Newport. Was it Sunday night we sat in the truck in a parking lot and I got him out of worry about work decision by asking him what he'd really like to do if he doesn't have to succeed. He said run a bookshop, play music. Talking about it calmed him down. Monday I took the bus to UCSD, talked to Gabriele and saw the canyon, went back to Nora's where Jim had brought two loads of mushroom compost. Planted while he waited. Tom took Tuesday off. Fumed while I shopped. Ralph Lauren sweater. Worth the ruckus. When Tom came back from his court appointment for Tony we had a beautiful couple of hours cuddling. Splendid poke in the morning. Flew home over California hills, bare, with roads along the ridges, oaks in the creases. Came in over the dark blue islands at twilight and there was Rob with the car, that he had used to go to Victoria and find land. Or not. I'm still aching. It's the syndrome from years ago. Aching in every muscle I use, stinging skin in palms, soles, lips, face. Yawning, sore tongue. I'm somewht muddled. Especially shoulders and right leg hurting. It's maybe mold and dust. Sunday 11th Sent Gabriele a proposal. Tom reported his research. His speech was delightful sinew and invention. I was lying in the lamplight listening to Wachtel speaking to Oliver Sachs and felt or remembered a state of evening darkness particular to winter. It was one of the deep states, connected to winter in Ban Righ Hall and in England. I wondered why I so seldom remember times with any fullness, or at all. Now I'm doing, not being. 12 Margo said the MA gathering could make nothing of the notes I sent them. What should I conclude from that? They haven't done the work. Can they? No. Is the being-doing dichotomy a true one     no They become alternatives because of the way doing is done     Will Being about be more important than this work     I'm a new model of what an academic can be     Connected to the canyon     Are you certain this is going to go ahead     I'll found the institute on this project     Should we accept Indian money     YES Gardens individually funded by private donors     Kumeyaay garden     And canyon work     14 my heart is physical and explosively invisible. but we all can see it. as I can see all of yrs not the cloudy, exhausting love i am so furious about, the love that comes in gentle waves the yankees just won game 3 of the world series and he's on. he's fiery and on, set in stone, growing like stone, he's on ... i want to flirt with him because i am always so impressed by him. the way he talks, what he does. his seriousness and his passion and his language ... so i'm thinking about me, me and writing. (oh, god.) me and writing. There's Maggie, packet 4. Will you be my advisor again next semester? she asks. Short vivid life or a long dull life - can there be a long vivid life? Long life with vivid and dull patches all of which mean something. 15 What's up this morning. Materials for ch 7. Student packets. Dinner at Dave Rimmer's tonight. Rowen last night saying he isn't able to finish tests because he writes too slowly, and no one is coming up with a strategy to help. Am I right in my guess that his brain is going R-L-R, an extra step? Is Rowen right that it tries to short circuit? YES. Is keyboard the answer? Are there other answers     Can you tell me one     process community of Rowen's judgment R and L?     no, within R Two?     More than two     no Can you tell me what they are     combat and anger Anger and whatever is in conflict with it     When he starts to work he finds anger     Part of his writing block is a block against anger     YES He should pour out anger into speech     YES Think of a tap that turns on and anger is the first thing that comes out     When it has run for a while there is writing     It's emotional conflict rather than anomalous dominance     YES 16 I have spent the morning thinking about Sarah's film. In my evening with them I was neutral as air. I was what I was without liking or disliking, except for David's film, which I loved with coos and advocacy against the professors he fears. Two blue-black feet pacing and turning between two kinds of motion at another pace: the stretch, float and lag of the red and white hem of a sari, the sharp spraying and falling of gold-colored grain plowed by her feet. He calls it walking meditation. It cycles for half an hour. It is a dance film, in the sense that I felt the movement I saw as such. 17 Sun out there, wisps of vapor off the shingles. The house is warm. It's Saturday. Louie's party is tomorrow. Is there anything to say before I begin student letters. An even background hum. All well, for now. 19 Louie's party. What do I think. I went at 2 and stayed till everyone was gone and then lay on the sofa hearing Louie and her mama murmuring about what to do with fluid left in the sausage-baking pan. I was catering staff through the worst stretch, yoga students and their write-off husbands. My heart hurts. Somehow. Was I there? It wasn't like the party on Wall Street, where I came in from writing the Perception without representation paper and had real talk and felt at home every moment. This time I had a rumble with Nancy and was snubbed by Karen Jameson and bored myself being lively with a sincere man called Eric. Best moment with Sue, telling her about the 6th College site. In the bathroom mirror I saw that different face I haven't got used to. It is as if my head is squarer as well as greyer. I am not a compressed dark head but a spread-out grey head. Gabriele wrote, "I love what you have come up with. You really understood what I was saying and developed a marvelous vision. Now I have to convince others ... almost an impossible task on this campus. We will stay in touch." What I want to say about the party was that I am coarser because of the work I am doing, the sociability. I'm more like other people. I don't like what Louie is in company either. She makes jokes in a voice I don't like. They succeed. I can see it was her manner in high school. They aren't good jokes. There is a crude push in the way she presents them. She walked me home after. She stood on the street with me looking up at the orange room. We saw the top of her mother's little bun and then the wide orange shadow on the ceiling. I was stroking her hair. She had a large successful day. Everyone wanted her house. Brought her presents, food, flowers. The best stretch was late, Joan, a large South African colored CN worker, Mohsen and his two kids, Margaret with her squawk-box voice, and her friend Venge, Louie and me by the fire. Her mum nodding off in the chair. Two of the people there were shift-workers, who had been up at five and had come after work. Joan was sitting on the floor with her legs straight out, telling about the freezer in her bedroom. Halibut. Riffing on apple pie. We were laughing loud, with great good will. Mohammed was jiggling his foot, touching his father's knee. Anna was on the other side of Mohsen, watchful. Margaret and Venge were kneeling next to each other between the sofa and the armchair. Louie had her back to the fire and was facing the room. I was leaning on the back of the armchair over Mama's nodding head. I liked Venge, who sat easy and ready, taking the turns in the story with sweet light glee.   volume 24 the golden west volume 23: 2001 may-november work & days: a lifetime journal project