Work and Days: The Golden West vol 24 - part 1 2001 November-December

the golden west volume 24 part 1 - 2001 november-december work & days: a lifetime journal project

Vancouver 21st November 2001

Speaking with Sarah last evening in the Alibi Room [about her film]. We were in leather chairs in the far corner, drinking tea. She looked beautiful. I kept my eye on her. I said what I had carefully found to say. I didn't hold back or forget. There was a raw quivering darkness in my solar plex.

I said that, to tell her what I did, I have to be on the line too. I think she felt that to be true, because she didn't defend or deny. She enquired more. I let her think, didn't speak until she asked. There was a very swift moment. I remembered the image of the road, that she uses twice. I said somebody has to go down that road. She was understanding before I finished the sentence, assenting. She wrote notes with a ballpoint pen. She asked who she should make it for, if not her mother or Michael. I said make it for someone larger than you, who has no weaknesses, no ego, who already knows the truth. What I actually said first, was, You're not going to believe this, make it for god. I said, If you make Michael the only excluded one, it's exploitation. If you don't tell the truth about your parents' role, it's mystification. She kept wanting to talk about her mother's denial. I said quite sharply, You can't do anything about your mother's lack of courage, you can only do something about yours. What was stressing me was the size I was assuming, responsibility. I was correct in that but it was a stretch to be out in the open with it.

She asked if I am thinking of making films. I said not at all. What's different about thirty-six and fifty-six is that I am not searching but thinking how to deliver what I've found. Film isn't the best way, now. What I do now is what I was doing with her.

Tom listened to this story and then told his own. He's into the research, though he finds these Indians very depressing. They're like mud people. Their fables make him want to kill himself. I was laughing then and am laughing now. I said, Is the depression theirs?

He said the episode with the drunk at the parking meter made him feel he could talk to me like a person not like a woman. When I said I wouldn't second-guess him about quitting his job, it pleased him. That hasn't happened in his career of quitting jobs.

He was in his room looking around and he said to himself that he's no longer moving toward the light, he's in the light. Good is increasing around our connection. He said he has concluded that he doesn't have to worry about holding onto power because he is other enough so I won't feel I have him in a box. He'll always be able to come at me from someplace I don't expect.

He also said he glommed onto what I was going to say to Sarah about art and honesty. He can work with that. It lets him admit to being an artist.

-

Later in the day Phil Hanson emails me to say Judith Stapleton has been caught plagiarizing papers for Mary Tiles and her husband. It came out she'd used my MA thesis to get herself admitted to the school.

Should I think she stole from me? No, it says, because she didn't take anything I would otherwise have had. She helped herself to my years of work, my crashes, all the truth I braved, that made me able to do what I do. She helped herself to my autonomy, the outsider's autonomy. But she didn't harm me.

She wasn't frightened when she'd phone or visit me, she was pompous, exhausting.

It's happened before. Mafalda [Reis] let her husband use my photos to get into film school.

22

Louie wants me not to want to go to her house to be with the house. Of course I do want to go there to be with her house. I want to be with the stuff I shopped for, as well as the house itself. I want to be by the fireplace drinking strong-spined port in the glass I brought from SD, while my laundry is humming quietly in the bedroom. I want to be looking across the room to the white candle in its glass holder, burning steadily against the black windows. She'd kill for a house like that, said one of Louie's guests. Louie would not have found it herself, and if she had furnished it herself she would have gotten it wrong. I'm aware, writing this, that Louie is my literary executor. Louie is not so large-souled she'll let an insult pass because it is true.

So there is a difficulty in my relation with Louie, which is the opposite, and not, of the one there used to be. I used to hate to be in her cave-hovel under Mrs Chung's house. Same, because being with Louie herself does not override these other considerations and she thinks it should. The reason it doesn't is, for instance, the way she takes this fact. She stops at the complaint. She doesn't investigate the reason. She doesn't go for broke. If I felt she was pushing to get through I would be wanting her company more than I do. Her social opportunism bores me, though it is also what allows her to buy the house. Thinking of telling her about Judith I was feeling the ways she is a plagiarist too. Her own taste is sentimental: it's the stuff people give her, the hideous washstand-thing her mother gave her prominent in the kitchen and positioned where it spoils the space.

What's the solution. She should give me access to the house without her. I should be able to go there with my laundry and sit reading. I've earned it. For our relation I should put it to her in correct terms: I think she is stuck holding onto small-self devices she should give up. I should be sure not to let liking her house stop me from pushing. Can she go further? It says yes. Should I ask what it is she wants from me? It has always been that push. I don't resent that, because it is the right thing to want.

Her little mama moving at the counter, long-nosed, bent, slow, with her top-knot knob. She speaks without the slightest variation, pleasant, even, compliant. I've now seen her alert twice: when I was talking about Sarah's moral problem, and when I was talking about Rowen's reading problem. Minister's wife areas of expertise. But last night, looking at the quince and pomegranate on the mantle, she described farmsteads in the Karoo, windmill over a very deep well, water tank, vegetable garden surrounded by barbed wire to keep out the little springbok, windbreak of quince and pomegranate trees. There would be a cooler, a little room with walls filled with charcoal kept moist by a trickle of water. In the cooler, figs and salted meat. During the nights the meat would be taken out and hung on the covered porch. At five o'clock after the heat, Iris said, the grandmother would sit on the porch in her apron peeling figs, one for each of the children, cold, like ice cream.

Now, what's next. Settle down. Chapter 7.

23

M said the letter to Tim was brilliant. No, she hedged: "I venture to say that this verges on, nay really is, brilliant." What someone in metaphor theory said about distance of qualifier from its term. What happened was, she thought, Whew, this is hot, did I ever do anything this tight?

Heard the phone ring as I was unlocking the door after seeing Tara Rosling in a movie. It was still ringing when I got to it. Judith Stapleton sounding frightened, calling from Hawaii. The strangest moment was when she defended what she did in the paper that got her caught, "I leaned too heavily on an old textbook, because I wanted to get it done quickly." She complained that Mary "went straight to the head of the department, without talking to me," as if she should have gotten away with it. I said I didn't think of it as audacity, I thought of it as madness. I was thinking, now's the chance to say everything I think. I said she'd lost her sparkle and was sounding always as if she wanted to impress; she seemed less real.

I wanted to make sure I named what she had done before I forgave her: I said she had helped herself to a distinction it has cost me a lot to get, costs she hasn't had to bear.

I wanted to know how she could not be frightened when she had coffee with me. She said she convinced herself all that was far, far away. Dissociation, that's what I mean, I said.

I said what I don't understand is how she could do it to herself. She didn't say, though I asked her twice. I don't think she understood the question.

Something about writing this sort of summary. It's a dull kind of writing. Plods through some recent event as if I don't know it and have to tell myself. I'm feeling something dimly - that I sort of don't know it. I'm handling it, but the earlier self who wrote the thesis doesn't know, the person who confided eagerly to her about Tom doesn't know, the person who gave her an A in Phil 100 doesn't know.

And further, am I built less and less myself, though more successful, because now I act so often by consulting the book?

I'm notching up - am I? - by working through things. I'm feeling out in the open, some. M isn't larger than I am, in the job. David Rimmer isn't larger. Joyce isn't larger. Writing Being about took confidence as if of being larger, but taking that material out and speaking from it, socially being larger, would be something else. What if I were speaking from the wider person more? It's like imagining transforming - Tom when he saw me walking out of the arrivals gate didn't recognize me though I was wearing something he knew. He said I wasn't limping. My face was fuller. I can feel that my walk has changed - should I track this more. I imagine becoming a frog - no longer a woman - a wise ancient reptile, lurking in warted skin. Is that how it is? No. Will you tell me what's happening? Withdrawn fight has come through by means of love woman. Do you mean learning to fight with Tom? Yes.

25

I told Louie it has been moral weakness week.

There's a Tom story I haven't told yet. He was working with Dick one day last week. Dick went off on a big black guy. Tom stepped between them. The man, who wasn't a guest, sat down among the smokers. Tom gave him five minutes and went after him, said to him, You need to leave now. The man did leave. Tom followed him to the door. Don't follow me, said the man. I'm following you, said Tom.

Something about the way he told this story. The terse rhythms. I adored it. I light up with glee in my bed thinking of my hasty tasty mannish man. - I can never say a thing like 'my man' without a superstitious move to erase it in case it will cause the gods to take him back. He, though, says 'my woman' very freely. The truth is I'm happy with him these days, very happy.

26

These large-effort letters to students are wasted on the students. I'm doing a good job but it's not what I should be doing. Yes, but I knew that. What I should be doing instead - something that depends on Being about being out.

Is Janet's defense worrying? She played the game impeccably and got the highest level of pass. Nylons, a dress, padded shoulders, makeup, dyed and styled hair. A topic they are worried about, those institution-guys. She took a beta blocker half an hour before. The men have little eyes. Even her man, Garnet, has little eyes.

When I was on the way there, this aft, waiting at the bus stop, a man arrived who looked at me as he came, stood near me, opened with a sentence about the weather. He was forty something, brown eyes, a little portly, with a scar on his upper lip. He said we were neighbours. When the bus came he was starting to tell me about institutes. He's a facilitator to four groups, one of which is an ecology business. He said he'd work for tea.

27

Google search yesterday - 5 pages of results - a magazine page on the garden said Ellie Epp, a passionate visionary.

I'm listing the conformities of successful Janet because I'm wondering whether a passionate visionary is going to make it through.

Is there a sense in which she didn't make it through? Did she let her bright brain be rebuilt to their purposes?

28

Tom sez AA people are like that. The memory of disrepute stays close and so they dress from Sears-Roebuck. What does she think when I dress in my docs and black silk pants, burgundy Ralph Lauren teeshirt, no makeup, and don't dye my hair? She thinks, Ellie's a normie, he says.

A book I got from the libe about the 'emerging' science of complexity turns out to be about building an institute. I take notes.

Evening - many hours sorting and noting for ch 7 - more hours in Complexity - it's almost December - I need to be done in two weeks - is that possible - a lot of [the college] in that period - packet 5 letters next week, procrastinator-stragglers - evaluations can be week after.

Mitchell Waldrop 1992 Complexity: the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos Simon and Schuster

-

Hebb, "minds getting richer, more subtle, more surprising as they gained experience with the world," "deep interrelationships of learning, evolution and creativity."

We can deal with inductive learning rather than deductive logic. The people who think this way have gotten more confident.

"Complexity in which there is basically no duality between [human] and nature ... we are in the middle of it."

Complex systems - thinking in networks vs hierarchies - a taoist sense of system - mutual accommodation workable - not optimisation.

Human body adapted/adaptive by changes of state - geography diverse by localization, unified by flow and law - network diverse by spatial location and unified by propagation.

More about the notion of adaptation. World Resources Inst, economic predation vs Buddhist economics, Schumacher's transitions to sustainability: to demographic stability, to technology of minimum impact, to economy charging real social and environmental costs, to well-being for all, social equity, to alliances that can integrate policy globally to broad base of informed people.

EF Schumacher 1973 Small is beautiful: economics as if people mattered Harper and Row

Cultural activism.

The mandate of the Congeneris Institute is to work for the glamour, prestige, value, of mind well-related to world.

29

While I'm working these days I'm thinking about my [dissertation] defense. What should I read or reread so it will be fresh. What weaknesses should I attend to. Will the neuroscience be outdated. Should I have someone check it.

Am starting to summarize: what I did, what I didn't do, why, how. For instance, why did I go so broad. Explain the exact nature and degree of interdisciplinarity.

30

I woke again, a night of many wakings, from dreaming I was hearing interviews / reading a big broadsheet newspaper, by or about young philosophers or philosophy students who were saying what I want to say in the mind and land project. Pachel somebody, and somebody Neimeyer? Something like that. I looked to the front page to see who had put out the broadsheet. A logo that said, The Origin People. Looking at it I cracked into feeling. One of those cracking into feeling moments, painful joy.

The point was the culture those voices were speaking from: relaxed, fast, informed, centered, carried on the front edge of the wave.

I turned on the radio. I'd left it last night on Bellingham's Christian station. There was a young ardent unusually hip voice preaching about the devil roaming the earth trying to trap us into compromise, talking us into trusting ourselves rather than the word of the lord. His exhortation was, O gang. I was listening with pleasure, curiosity, distrust, apprehension. I have always loved an exhortation to stand strong, committed, uncompromised. I believe in trusting the direction of the larger something. I am living the life the better preachers describe, working through stopping points, strengthening other spirits, centred in a large coherence, joyful in a plan, and so on. But could my strength and happiness be the payoff of a deal with the devil? Could the devil have taken me by means of Joyce and the bookwork?

The doubt is there, set into me in childhood. I defend myself with observations: the Christian culture is a stupid dishonest culture, the best people I see are not Christians. I have won my strength and happiness by honesty and effort, willingness in pain. The Christians have no clue how to help me. They were the devil that destroyed Frank. Before I took this road I was locked in isolation and uncertainty, unable to do good. I am living the life they recommend more than they are. In this age it is better to find it around us, in life, than to try to find instructions in doctrine and scripture, which are infested with male vested interests and interpretable in mutually inconsistent ways.

But the notion of the devil is the spoiler. If there is a being who could make all observation uncertain - this is Descartes - then I am helpless to decide anything and must look for someone to make decisions for me. But I could be wrong about those someones. And so it is a reductio isn't it. I must stand in what I am. But there is also a distinction among I's. Stand in the I that recognizes, not the I that speaks first thoughts.

What is the devil, though - seduction - existence and possibility of - seducibility, weakness - the sins that are their own punishment.

Here's a thing that's worrying - is it? I notice I'm hard about the unfortunate. I feel about prostitutes and drug addicts in the downtown East Side, let them die. I feel about warring factions anywhere, let them kill each other. Let the unfit cull themselves. A true Christian will not want any spirit lost. But I think I can do more to help spirits by working for what I do work for than by caring about those deaths. But still, does the hardness mean something? Does it matter?

I've spoken an accompanying undervoice today, one I hear when I'm sitting in the green chair or in the bathtub, sometimes.

Email from Maggie called december's edge. pack of fives mondeath, yes? she says. I'd want to pass her on the title alone.

2nd December

What am I feeling today - misgiving. It has to do with the doc and the institute idea both. I'm going to SD for Christmas, yes. But now I'm coming up against next steps.

I'm scared they'll say the doc is too diffuse, not supervised at all, sloppy, fantastical. I'm scared that I'd be way out of my depth with an institute, I'm being grandiose, all I have is a vague wish to validate what I think I am and most of the rest of them aren't. Even if it were a strong real idea, I don't know how to proceed, I don't know what the institute would do.

-

Exasperated with these inept lost students. Curiosity is a divine freedom they don't have. They aren't even curious about themselves.

3

What am I actually thinking about the [college] work. These people, except for Maggie, cannot use me. They would be better with someone whose interest would be scaled to what they can do.

Will you explain them to me indecision about mourning means they don't recover honesty
Deferred pain in every case
Even the ones in agony are deferring pain
I can't help them
So will you explain my role facilitate slow growth toward deep change by complete contemplation
I don't know what you mean by complete contemplation, do you mean my contemplation no
Theirs
My job is to see them YES
Is that the whole of my job no, the core of it
Will you tell me how that then works out in letters to bring what's unconscious in them into slow growth of honest sharing
On that standard I've succeeded with a few
Think of [the college] as an angelic soul rescue mission
In the guise of a college
It's an undercover institution
Think of it as a kind of mid-level loony bin
That's why the woman in my dream disapproved
The philosopher's wife, meaning the philosopher's feeling
Meaning when I get into philosophy I'm appalled
Just notice it
Enough for now no, you are graduating, completing coming through into action
This is part of it
Getting ready for action

4

At the bank a man called Bowen Ko approved a US$ Visa, that is, a second Visa card, to a limit of $2000. (What's my job? he asks. I say professor. He doesn't ask how much I earn.) He did it as I sat there - amazing. He took his name, he said, from an English dictionary, when he was leaving secondary school. He had very slim fingers and wore a gold wedding band in a remarkably small size. If I want my institution to mail my checks to the bank, he personally will deposit them for me, he says.

My passport picture - let me describe this sorry thing. I am wearing the red sweater and black scarf. The right side of my face is much older than the left. I see it in the fold above the eye, the crease under the eye, and drooping skin between cheek and jaw. The young side of my face has a rounder cheek with more shine, a clear eyelid. The old side, seen alone, has a hawk intensity, boring through. The young side has a slightly pained or worried look. There could be twenty years difference between the two sides. I'm yellowish. My mouth is compressed.

The passport photo I am comparing it to was taken just before I went back to school, 1988, thirteen years ago. My hair was dark and thicker. I look beautiful, juicy, though I was already forty three. I'm wearing the tweed coat. My mouth is full and soft. My eyes are large.

5

It's about lack of soul and innerness. What should I do about it?

6

Tom has a plan and it comes out of thinking about mind and land. He noticed there isn't an environmental newspaper for San Diego county. He could go to environmental groups and say, let me print your newsletters. He could go to war for San Diego county. He can do it because he has less ego. He's not so intent on yuppie money. He has balanced his temper.

I think he's got it. He knows how to do it. It would engage him. He has the energy. He needs a way to keep up with me. I could do photos. Website.

What I did yesterday - applied for passport - got Premarin and wild yam stuff - picked up Michelle's packet at the Harbour Center computers - phoned Tom - wrote most of Michelle's letter, to eleven at night - and before all that, in the morning, had a wild holiday designing a California house. It gripped me, one of the houses I've ripped out of AD, a pink-orange stucco with steel frame windows.

7

I was dreaming I was reading a book. As I read I was seeing a garden suggested by the book, roses, grass. At the same time I was thinking I could write a book. I could read/write it as I traveled, living the way I like, finding small hotels. It could be a book with summer in it, and - here I'm stopped not knowing what the other thing was, exactly. Do I know? Vanishingly. Fullness of spirit, thoughts, liveliness of mind, interest in being.

Rowen said on the phone this week that he wants to work with the cards.

8

Tom yesterday in a manic state about his website/newspaper. What I saw was that he was thinking most about image not motive - he's thinking how he wants himself to be seen in the enterprise - "the editor of the ---." I was too tired to engage with it, but should I engage with it now? Image is his weakness, and care for image is self-defeating, because, for all his care with clothes and language, he looks like someone who hasn't taken care of the core. It's because he hasn't taken care of the core that he has to care so much for image, I know. But is he a danger to my plausibility? Does he actually care about San Diego county? Is this his way of coming into it through what he was? Should I fight with him about it? Is there a core of true passion still to be found? Whenever he's manic doesn't it mean restimulation?

-

Louie asked whether I had the burst of house fantasy the day after the ugly passport picture. (Yes.)

It is the last few years that have made me look like that, the slog years. This morning I am feeling I gave up my spirit and entered slavery. The separate papers were written in bursts of not more than a week. This last stretch has been a year and a half, and I have come out of it so old that people in grocery stores have suddenly begun to ask whether I need help carrying my groceries. The worst is that the papers had dash, and this long text is dully written. My spirit does not like to slog.

I dreamed just now that I was with a man holding up something white and feathered. We were in a restaurant. It occurred to me that if I pointed the two ends of the feathered thing it would look like a swan. Were the restaurant patrons finding it beautiful? Middle-aged men. Looking at it against the light, I could see maggots inside it.

Being about. It's a good title. The outline is good. But it has died on me. Do I need to work through this reluctance? In general? Can I? Now?

Will you lead me (7p)
That's the image of it, yes, disgusted standing by the pile, hopeless
Lead some more something about the work
Do you want to say what (7p)
Will you point it angry
I'm angry at the work
I'm angry at the work! YES
Do you mean the pile
Do you mean the process no
The actual pile
Those nine chapters
For not being good
For not winning anything for me no
More? for being withdrawn
Uninspired, no energy
Because I was withdrawn when I wrote them NO
Like I hate my students for their dullness
Absorbing so much work and being nothing
Giving nothing back
Do you want to say more about withdrawn come through, despair, about loss, and slow growth
In general
Losses in general
I'm withholding love from the chapters
(Heart sore) Is that why I look the way I do
Is this a large structural weakness
Will you say more you are learning, responsible, authority's, losses
Responsible authority is overrated NO
Physical drain no
(Midback feeling) Is that a release
Authority can't afford to withhold love from failure
Is that what you mean
That's what takes the toll
You're talking about loving failure
Do you mean, as such no
Will you explain act, in truth, and hidden, authority
It is action
Occult authority YES
Do you mean hidden sacrifice no
Will you gloss 'occult' 'at another level'
Love failure by working for it
Like I did for Sarah
Do you mean that feeling of being on the line no
Something I'm doing already no
Would I be able to understand it no
Do you mean you
Love failure by handing it to you
Am I doing that already no
The way I stop being irritated if I get it named right
Do I need to do that with Being about
Do you want to say more about this no

More in relation to me and Being about
Will you lead action
You're going to tell me what to do? work, to meditate, and temper, its authority
Give more of it to you
Do I have time to do what you say
Will you tell me what you mean make your judgment more responsible to creation
More freedom
Take out the boring parts no
Wing it more no
Later
More about more responsible to creation integrate, completion, delayed, child
Bring in what the child gave up YES
Do I know what that is no
Confidence no
Hope
Allow hope
Build hope
Deal with resistance to hope
Instead of house dreaming
Enough for now? no
The way I've given Maggie hope
More? about organization
Okay flow withdrawn in response to the men
Do you mean Phil YES
And Kathleen
And nonresponse all round
I couldn't help it
They defeated me no
They curbed me no
I curbed myself on account of it
That's why I'm angry at it
It's a site of self defeat
I didn't want to do that but I did
I cannot recover flow with this project
But I resent it bitterly
It's because I've needed permission for flow
There it is
That's why I look the way I do
Do you want to lead further no
Is that the dead end
I didn't mean to but I did
Will you comment temperance
Instruction
Temper what's left
That's why I've needed to move into other projects
Can I recover energy

9

It says I'm angry at the work because I curbed myself in relation to it. It's a site of self-defeat because I needed permission for flow and didn't get it. Bring it what the child gave up, hope. Allow hope, deal with resistance to hope.

It is related to what's happened with my students: authority cannot afford to withhold love for failure, it says. Withholding is what takes the toll. Love failure by working for it. Love failure by handing it to something larger. The way I stop being irritated if I get it named right.

11

Tuesday morning, dark, a ticking of rain at the window. Chapter 7. Three more evaluations, car being fixed. Ten days 'til I go. Little fights. Ray distressed in that nest of vipers, the department. Phone Rowen tonight to coax him to work on touch typing.

Maggie's self evaluation had a compact workerly feel that wasn't in her three months ago. Then when she sets one of her strong true lines, is it less effective? i am a writer, she says, the voices of strong writers inspire me to hear my own. i walk the streets and hear myself writing.

And you, sweetie heart. How is chapter 7?

12

Happy to have begun my writing Ramadan.

13

Gym, yoga, no Tom, no radio, no newspapers, clean house, no email before 5, feel sorrows if there are some, don't think about [the college] at all, finish chapter 7.

And then stress at night. Wake at 3 and can't go back to sleep. The g-forces of acceleration.

When I phoned Mary last night Ed answered. Is Mary there? No she's not. Will you tell her Ellie called? What was the message...? Tell her Ellie called. Who? Harry? Ellie. Ellie called. Very good, he says tightly. Thanks, 'bye. Goodbye.

Can I sleep through the night if I'm accelerating no
Is there something you recommend skill
Will you tell me what to do when I wake at night deep change
How practical valor to balance judgment
Say how love woman's indecision about energy reserves
Is she supposed to release energy
Free love
But can you say procedure process to come through deep change in points of indecision
Whatever I vacillate about
For instance doing Mind and land
For instance Being about
Does she vacillate about those
It's not that she's one position in a vacillation
Will you give other examples no
Those are the ones
Gain freedom and energy for work
Imagine the process and work through resistance

Can you explain what happened to Louie
Is it an actual sensing no
An illusion that expresses a knowledge
Is it knowledge about Larry no
Think of it as a dream YES

14

My mum last night, so dull. It's nothing but ailments and relatives. Ed is losing it. He thought the phone call was Hilda with a message about Ellie.

Last night a wind came up that is still here, buffeting the house, whomping the sheet metal roofing on the garage across the alley.

When I woke at night I did what the book suggested, thought of my work and felt the stiffness of resistance in my midriff. Love woman is afraid that if the gate of power opens I will be an ugly old thing, I will be too sharp to tolerate Tom. It relaxes when I say this. I picture a gale of transparent energy blowing into my head from below, a refining fire to make beautiful not ugly. I have also been imagining holding my book in my hands, the monkey picture on the cover.

Louie told me a story yesterday about a ghost. She was at Larry Chan's office having acupuncture for her back. He left her in the room with the heater and needles placed on both sides of her body. She likes it there. She had an impulse to hum. When she did, she heard the door open. She thought maybe his assistant had come to check. But then she felt a presence, a man, standing at her left shoulder looking down at her. She thought, it's Larry's teacher. He moved to her right side and placed two needles. She felt an immediate effect. Yes, those are the right places. When Larry came back into the room he placed his fingers directly onto the spots where she had felt the two needles. When she was dressed to leave she told him what she had felt. He said he had once worked with a psychic who also said she'd seen his teacher. Louie said that during the experience she had dimly become aware that it was unusual and she should bring an observing consciousness.

I've just spent two hours writing an evaluation of my own semester. Is it like being appraised correctly by someone else? As I wrote it I was imagining showing it to M and my mum. What does that mean -

Reading bits of Nights below Station Street. It's a sublime book.

David Adams Richards 1988 Nights below Station Street McClelland and Stewart

15

When I woke this morning I was thinking angrily of churches, religion, any of them, piety, elaborated delusion. Then I thought particularly, angrily, of my grandmother coercing me into getting saved when I was seven. I was in my little bed in the sewing room. We had been to an evening service, a revival meeting probably at MEI. It was Saturday night. She came in without turning on the light and sat in my bed. She said I would go to hell if I didn't accept Jesus into my heart. I felt cornered. She loomed over me. I didn't like her then, she was a harsh bossy person who left me to the big girls and only had to do with me in authoritative ways. Now she was suddenly there pushing at my intimate self. She was using a particular tone, the wheedling significant hushed tone of the altar call. She had me pinned down. I made a rapid calculation: if it was true, I'd be safe, if it wasn't true there'd be no harm. I gave in and said I'd do it. I closed my eyes and thought in words something like, dear Lord Jesus, I accept you, please come into my heart. She was satisfied, pressed my hand probably, and went away. Next morning as I passed Uncle Bernie, who was at the ironing board in the kitchen, he said something like, Don't you feel happy? I noticed, without saying so, that I did not feel different.

Is that one of the losses I'm supposed to feel
Will you tell me what I lost betrayal, construction, shattered the structure, anger
I betrayed myself no
She betrayed me
I defended myself as best I could
My calculation was incorrect
I wrote them all off in that event YES
I said, I'm alone here
Can you tell me what I lost, with one card love woman
Lost my ability to feel
I had already lost it by then no
I sold out heart's truth no
It was stolen
I said I was opening my heart without opening my heart
What she did was evil
Will you lead me you had to wait
I went into stasis until I left home
They stole my childhood YES
The clear heart of that lovely little girl
They stole Frank's entire life
The people who did it to me had it done to them
People of the lie
I did not do it to my kids
I did worse things no
I abandoned both of them no
One of them
I stole Luke's childhood by doing that
Is Rowen's writing disability because of ultrasound
Abandoning Luke was as bad
Will you tell me what a free attitude would be acknowledged loss
Anger is a sort of denial of loss
I don't know how to feel it as loss
Her aloneness and hardness
When she could have been soft, bright and gifted
That aloneness and hardness is still with me no
Now my heart is sore, is there anything I should do with it no
It's the aloneness and hardness I see in my mum YES
She tried to come through with me NO that wasn't trying to come through
Am I correct to write them off YES

With them is it mainly about death denial YES

-

Is there something else I want this morning - there must be, I keep holding off. I'm being so strict for some reason. When the work starts it doesn't stop 'til the day is over - write - email - gym - clean - cook - yoga - sleep. It's taking care of, it has to be done, it has to be done, done. Why. To be able to notch up. Being ugly and having the house dirty makes me close myself away. Doesn't it? Want my house to be fixed while I'm away. Paint kitchen and corridor, varethane corridor floor. What I really wanted was a sweeter spirit, more beauty, more float and fly, depth, marvel, bliss. Is this the way to do it? It says yes. A week from now I'll be in the air over California. Press on.

A teacher at Julliard, quoted in Fast Company, says she asks students where they want to go, then where they think they are now. She said she wants to know how deluded they are.

Riddley Walker. I don't remember how appalling it is. When I read it before I didn't feel it.

Not reading the newspapers I am missing war stories, bin Laden making a stand in the mountains. The wind the other night, the headlines said, the worst storm in years. Will Tom be shutting down because of this separation? Today I've been so tired. It's been cold rain, dark sky, rain hard and cold. When I walk to the gym I come home wet to the knees. The muscles of my head and neck hurt from the cold. The dark of the year.

16

Im trying to bring on that seed of the red in you Im trying to strong it on Im trying to get you to be your oan black dog

Storming. Storms here have never lasted for days.

I am so, so well today. Am in the last part of the metaphor section, 32 floors on stairmaster, the bathroom is clean, and it's only 7:15. Energy. Yoga later, I'll go back to Riddley Walker now. One of Tom's tapes playing in the kitchen. My ducks are in a row. Luke's birthday tomorrow. It is two years since I've seen him.

17

Luke is well. I phoned when I woke, at 7:30, and found him arriving at the top of Table Mountain at 5:30 on a hot afternoon. He was walking, breathless. When he arrived at the rim two minutes later wind buffeted the mouthpiece. I could hear a woman speaking in a South African accent. He would be taking the cable car down for a dinner appointment with Jill and Sean. He's 31, conceived in great, innocent hope, born in delight, and then after many vicissitudes is living at the crest of his times, stretched and succeeding at work, sticking to therapy, has DVD rights, he says, to all the wildlife films of the best producers in SA, maybe going to New York and LA in February. Will go kite-surfing at St Francis with Charlie over the holidays.

Rowen phoned last night as I'd turned off the light to sleep. He couldn't remember why he called - to tell me he got 62/65 in the multiple choice on Animal Farm. It's falling apart at home. What's the worst that could happen? He doesn't want to say. He doesn't want to think about it. I talk him into telling me. Michael could commit suicide. He's smoking dope all the time, he's very moody, when Lise said she was going to go away for a week he broke down and begged her not to. I said, Let's ask the book right now. It said he could but he won't. I tell Rowen he has to understand he's not responsible for them. If he's using fantasy books to keep from feeling what he's feeling he's doing what Michael is doing. He's responsible to feel what he feels, that's all. When Rowen talks to me from his room in Campbell River I hear the ziiiiiip as he opens his binder.

I said I thought Michael married Lise for her land. It wasn't a love match and so he compromised himself and that's what's wrong with him now. Rowen didn't want to hear it but he had had the question ready, Why this one?

18

Four days to finish. The house is clean except for the corridor, windows, and paper piles. Kitchen last night 'til water drops were falling off my forehead. Chapter 7 done through the end of metaphor. I can do it, I think.

Mary phoned to say that at four yesterday a young man handed her a great tall bunch of fresh flowers. She has to use her tallest vase. I said put them on the balcony at night.

I'm rereading Riddley Walker in wonderment. There is no one I could give it to, no one I could talk to about it. Many kinds of thoughts as I read. About the jumble of symbols being interpreted, being incompetently pieced together by someone who doesn't know the culture they come from. About the language, all the Latinate terms broken down into Anglo-Saxon. It's a dark-of-the-year book, rain, night, mud, moss, ivy, stinks of dog, ash, smoke, blood, rot, shit, muck. The theoretical/theological terms keep meaning something else. Alliances among the persons keep refitting. Far past and far future together. Alchemy and atomic fission, cathedral and particle accelerator. Eusa/USA. Prebirth consciousness as blind twin. The green man. Dog intuition. The hung man. Red and black, the red ends of cut alder.

ready to cry ready to dy ready for any thing is how I come to it now. In fear and tremmering only not running a way.

when he comes in 2 his cock and balls theyre on his lef side his head and neck theyre on his right

a show man, a connexion man

Russell Hoban 1982 Riddley Walker Paperback

19

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. The thinking section. Still a lot to do to take all the chapters with me. Starting to need a briefcase, aren't I. So many files to take.

Reading Sept-Dec 2000, two things I had forgotten. The agony over Being about, and the start of Frank after his life. I was close to dumping Tom, he was so shut down.

What's different is mind and land came to me when I was abandoned and crying through.

I should go back to Frank.

20

Scrubbed the corridor last night. I do that sort of work at high cost in aches. In yoga afterward, my body feels as if it doesn't have enough gelatin in it. It feels as if it is made of slabs of some brittle material. If I ever get it nice again I will have to make sure to maintain because it costs too much to bring it back.

A black pea-coat, Eddie Bauer, nice, light - a winter coat. It's for Vermont. It has an inner pocket with velcro.

Can I finish tomorrow? I've done almost everything, floor, laundry, ironing, library books, tuition, Mac disks with all the stuff on them, Manuel to do an estimate, phone Rob, phone Rowen, phone numbers copied in book, clean house, clean bed. I'm lying here staring at my coat. Ah but what's left in the chapter - three little sections, thinking and act metaphor/frontal cortex; spatial schemas; conceptual spaces. Yeah, might be able to.

Do you want to talk to me about Tom in SD adjust, anger, in order to, share coming through
Instruction? no description
It's now stable improvement YES
Should I poke his bum
More he's not evading integration of mourning and anger
He feels them as they come YES
More he is adjusting by contemplating child's deep change
Himself as a child
Reaching to the child
Am I going to be able to feel him

Anything else you want to talk about finishing Being about
Do you want a sentence delay, completion, to be happy, in judgment
Don't think of it as finished until I'm happy with it
Is that what you mean
But I can say I'm finished
Do you want to add anything community will process mourning and anger
Community will be outraged by it
Mourning and anger mean they will feel they lose by it
Will you tell me what they'll feel they lose they won't want to spend the time

21

A night of many tones between waking and sleeping. Bothered by whatever is near to be bothered by. Judith stealing Analog-Digital. (Why would that be coming back now?) Horrible Lise. Still hearing Riddley Walker's hard-bit language. Seakert tryers, advanssit theery. I would try to put myself to sleep, and almost would, by coming into the studio with high ceiling and warm pink floor and looking at the tables standing around three sides. Two tables in the middle, one with the introduction and one with the parts of chapter 10. 1, 2, 3, 4 on four tables on the west side of the room. 5 Imagining, in the NW. 6 Representing on the other side, NE. 7, 8, 9 along the east. Then I would look in the cupboards, a video editing set-up and the We made this tapes on the right of the door, all the journals with typed versions in small drawers, on the left. I had people gathering in good chairs for advisory board meetings with the red-haired woman bringing coffee and cake, and lunch set up among the olive trees and meadow grass at the foot of the garden.

Meantime it is 9:30 Friday morning. There are beautiful men, quite a few, walking around with plywood, re-bar and concrete blocks on the site across the alley where Koo's Automotive is being turned into condos. I am wondering about dyeing my front hair dark blue. It would look nice with the good sweater and the pea-coat.

-

Evening. Calling it finished, though the last three sections are pasted together, rough. Went to Louie's house where the fire's gift, whatever it is, that great fine natural goodness of heat that is perfectly right, reaches across to the chair though it is not near. Came in joyfully in my new coat and said, Louie my Ramadan is over, I want some port. Louie said, Did you finish chapter 7? I said, No, I finished IT, I finished all of it.

Gracious Iris was on the little sofa hemming silk pants from China. My geranium spreading its arms to the wide windows. Louie brought out antipasto on the little green plates. I sipped that hefty port from a shot glass. Louie sat on the fireplace curb in a red - there is no good word for those upper garments that aren't sweaters or pullovers or teeshirts - a red longish long-sleeved top - talking about the book explaining things to her as she was at Larry Chan's with needles in her.

- At that moment Nathalie phoned. She used to always phone the night before I left. As we spoke I could see ten candles lit for the event, on the work table with the piece of juniperwood, is it, from the frosted moonlight the first night on the road six years ago.

22nd

Now it is 4:50 in the morning. I am eating warmed-up pollock stew, sitting up in bed.

-

And now in 14F on the right side of the plane, four hours later, trickles beginning to clear the window as the sun rises against it. I can see the mountains' little angles in even powdery blue outline against a paler powdery blue. Oh the amount of standing in lines - at check-in, to get into the secured area, to buy an airport improvement ticket, to get through customs, to go through the scanner, to buy coffee at Starbucks, to show boarding card and passport at the gate.

part 2

the golden west volume 24: 2001-2002 november-may
work & days: a lifetime journal project