the golden west volume 25 part 2 - 2002 june-july

work & days: a lifetime journal project

8th June I'm panicking - my heart hurts - I'm cold - I'm exhausted from sleeping badly - I don't have a computer - the laptop floppy drive is broken - Louie's computer has no monitor - I can't find references - I have that dry-mouth unwellness - Louie hates me because I sounded authoritative about something in yoga - accidentally - there are so many references to find - I cannot keep them in mind as I zip through books looking for my marks - these huge neuroscience anthologies are weeks overdue but I cannot process them - I ache all over - So is my life going to change completely     Do you want to say more     happy departure, decision to come through Question is come through to what     YES, end of delay You mean like popping through a gate     Do you want to say more     turn for the better coming through childhood journey Do you mean my people are not segregated     They can all come with me     You mean I am coming into my own because I have dealt with what's needed       More     conflict, mourning, tempered, improved So do you want to tell me about love woman's life     YES, early love, act, to temper, evasion Do you mean in other people?     Nothing but moral work     no Do you mean students     no Do you mean writing     no Activism     Do you mean land and mind     Make people able to endure early love     Can I do that     Was love woman in early love     Was that the point about the exquisite lesbian     Write about it     no, act 9 This morning the room is warm, sun on the wall, clear sky, quiet of Sunday early. I'll work. Not yet. A man in my dream said, you look ---, something like, You look like a leader. I'm a professor, I said. I'm a philosopher. What about digital Orpheus - the story of coming through - could I still do that - in a way that brings them through - in episodes and chapters - with mists and edges - colors - all women - Hades is Jam - to make it clear that hell is home to some - an explicit story - Joyce is the goddess - a narrator? No, voices. A suite of poems? Yes. 10th Tom is disappointed in himself because he's broke, he doesn't have a left eye tooth or the means to get one, and my laptop isn't working. He barked at me. When he's grouchy isn't it always that his self-opinion is under threat? Then I feel: now on top of everything else I'm supposed to run around and make the computer work so that he will have given me a good present. I went into the dr's office to get a prescription for Premarin and the very sharp young thing, who looked like a high school girl, took my blood pressure and said it's high, said it's still high, 162/90, supposed to be 140/80. I was at the computer and felt a flush of fear. Apart from that, this morning I woke to a bath of orange. There was sun from the northeast onto the west wall at 5:50, and straight ahead in the sky above the mountain a field of dab clouds, unusual, in the blue. I jumped up. 15th I have an inside room at the Maryland. 17 Running around this morning looking for yam gel, picking up my ticket, delivering stuff to Pilgrim's Market, taking house magazines to my old place for Leah, books to Don at MacLeod's for $20, then Harbour Center, mailing to Rowen and BC Med, redoing a wrong illustration, scanning out of Fuster and giving the book back to the libe, answering email. Driving to SFU and looking for my floppy, turning in department keys for $30 deposit, bringing the manuscript to Vivian, showing her how to assemble it, talking about venue and how to organize the room, giving her Paul's address on Bowen. Driving home, stopping to buy tape, coming back and finishing packing, wrapping the boxes in tape, struggling downstairs with two boxes and the big suitcase, driving to Rob's to pick him up, giving him the key, bringing him back to Louie's and sitting in the living room with him, whisking him out to be able to phone Tom after seven. Packing the other suitcase and ironing my pants. Louie is somewhere teaching. Vancouver airport, 18th World Cup on the monitor, a calm British voice, tiny players in blue and white, red and white, Japan and Turkey. "A great ball, a terrific ball, and Alex will attack from here." Singing comes on the wind from invisible fans. "A really intimidating atmosphere for the Turks to come into." Coach in a suit chewing gum frantically. The goalkeeper has a curly ponytail and kicks that long-legged swift lovely long kick from the hip. Marazaki the goalkeeper with drenched hair. Here I am in the holding pen, my boxes made it on, I'm through the wall. Rob had roses in the car to show me. Félicité et Perpetue, pink buds with serrated sepals, a classic soft white rose. Louie at her door in bare feet at 6:20. I blow her a kiss from the sidewalk across the street. Was that too remote? But just as I like it, not to say goodbye. Rob drove, Rob still, my reliable friend, lower lip pulled back behind his upper, hair still taffy brown, he's 45, a lad. We sat side by side on Louie's couch and he analyzed the structure of the room - why is that board there, is it covering an electric line to the lights? It was nice sitting next to next in the room quietly. Then I said I must check the time. 7:10. Have to make a phone call. I'm well dressed in my black silk pants and new olive green zipped shirt with a stand-up collar. Tom will approve because it's stylin'. I look nice. Elegantly sporty. Futuristic, Louie said. Nakata's kick on goal failed, the ponytail goalkeeper jumped and caught it. One of the things about seeing these athletes is that every one of them is beautiful, unlike these lumps and gargoyles in the commuter departure lounge. Many of the athletes have shaved heads so they are looking monkish, spiritually fit. It's a game with runs and stops into poses. Two players collide and stand posed in the air. Sharpen my pencil. What is it about the way they run. They don't lift their feet because they need them low to be able to get under the ball. Why do I hate traveling family parties - because they bring so much of their home life with them. Last evening missing Louie when everything was done and she was away teaching, I pulled her albums from the shelf above the dryer. Lovely small Louie in a bikini washing her hair under an outdoor shower in Italy. 8:30, they'll be boarding any moment. Louie's family quality, people well placed, intelligent, nice-looking, provident. Her mother about 1964 in white high heels with her hair up, Sunday dress with a full skirt, sitting regal with her husband the minister already white-haired, six children standing behind her. - Seattle. Off Horseshoe Pass, I think, there were beautiful lines on the water. They were stationary and shaped like ripple lines on sand or like light lines thrown on the water's floor. I couldn't tell whether I was looking through clear water onto khaki-colored mud or whether I was seeing concentrations of silt on the surface. The lines ran parallel in bands, but others lay across. In effect it was a light-colored net in a clear depth-less medium. I could tell it was in the water rather than under only because two ferries plowing through them cut a visible furrow. LAX commuter terminal. Oh humans, you are so weird. A woman in purple nylon pants and jacket, hair dyed apricot, mauve lipstick, pale foundation, grey-blue tinted glasses, chewing, chewing, gum. "Here's Mary, 'bye, Grandma, I love you," says the blond next to me. Woke at three and was lying awake at 4:30 seeing a rosy patch in the cloud above the mountain. Hearing crows, the BC coast sound. Slow finger on my clit put me into a white doze for an hour until the alarm beeped. The best moment yesterday Louie and me on the sofa in the early morning drinking tea together, laughing because there was an ant on the floor at our feet. He wants to be with us, I said sentimentally. Louie went off on a fantasy about the couple-pet that does not need a litter box or shots. If it hurts its paw, you just - she pulls her foot across our imagined pet. We giggle. San Diego, 19th It is a horrible room, dark, the carpet dirty. Worst is the smell of some cleaning product that is making me ache. Last night a woman in the hall laughing maniacally and another shouting at her little boy. I paid $524 for this, more than eight hundred dollars. Tom came to the airport in blue jeans and a new white teeshirt, a shaving graze under his jaw. We haven't connected. He plied me with music and talked-talked-talked. I told him nothing about anything. My bike tire is completely flat. And on the other hand he got up and showed me the stroll. When he was playing me the first side of his tape he was whacking rhythm on my knee while bumping his pelvis against me. It was blissful fucking. I mean I felt the whacks in my cunt. There is Tom's coin-cloud jade [crassula arborescens] on my bureau in its pink bowl the color of the rims on the round pads. The bureau and desk are good pieces, solid, clean, matched. The light well - I can't see the light well from my bed, that's not good - but the light well has a weathered pale green showing darker green where rain has run off two ledges. One has a pigeon sleeping very safe and quiet. Most of the other windows have their venetians down and their curtains drawn. The windows are very dirty. On Monday when I was in Vivian's office showing her how to assemble my piles of manuscript a man with a keen close-shaven face came and stood at her door looking at us. Something about his face. Intelligent. I looked at him gladly. He was quietly humorously self-possessed. -- --, substitute dean, reporting for duty, he said. 21 Today I'll start working again. Yesterday I read My Antonia and this morning I finished Light action in the Caribbean. One of the stories brought me to myself with a jolt of feeling. It was about a man who went to a monastery after a woman left him, and there built a model sailing clipper. When it was done, after three years, he took it to the ocean and launched it. The brothers were standing by with boxes and bundles. He turned and saw "standing offshore, a ship three hundred feet long, its high masts gyrating gently under the morning sky." "I was glad in building the ship I had cut no corner." That was the line. It took me to myself because I remembered digging the northeast corner of my plot at the garden. There was a boulder under the corner where I intended the compost box. I looked down into the hole around the boulder and said, No, the foundation has to be right. I felt I was rebuilding myself. My shock of tears was in gratitude to myself for the model I built, and what has followed. Last night was like having my boots stuck in gumbo. Tom and I in his room with nothing to do. He gazes at me steadily. I feel abashed and embarrassed. I have nothing in me to offer. I want to be in my room alone. It gets worse. Because I don't know what I am he proceeds to tell me. He takes the opportunity to tell me. While he is speaking I can't think. He doesn't stop talking long enough to let me think. I know I haven't been feeling my circumstance. There was something about the way I said goodbye to both Louie and Rob. Louie at the door across the street, standing barefoot on her sill. I blow her a kiss. I barely remember to. It is the same at the airport, Rob waiting to see whether they will take my boxes of papers. I remember to blow him a kiss as I begin to wheel my four pieces of luggage toward customs. Then later I remember those two moments fleetingly, dimly, several times. In the flight from Seattle I steal the window seat from a young woman going to San Diego to show dogs. Tom is trying but oblivious. He can't stop with the music. Piles of newspapers with notes written on them. If I had an open heart I would be heart-sore. As it is I am kind of blank. It is quiet and chilly, sea mist cutting off the sun. Birds in the light well. About the defense. About Tom. About having left 824 East Pender. About [the college], the new MA program, I guess. About Tom, I should quickly remember the central fact, that I can't do it without clarity. I have to get to bedrock so I am not vulnerable to his thinking. I can't afford to be passive or let it wash past, or try things out. I have to know what I'm doing. About [the college], am I okay to ignore it for now? Do I have to think about it before I go? No, it sez, leave it. Am I okay about having jumped? Yes it says. I did say goodbye to the house. Alright, about the defense. Should I be doing yoga? Yes. Should I go chapter by chapter? Yes. A couple of days per chapter? Yes. Do the introduction and conclusion together. Should I be thinking about what they will ask? Should I be thinking about it in relation to a book? Will it be a book? Yes. Look for charming incidentals. Yes. 24 Street, Monday morning. Chapter 1 review waiting at my desk. The marine layer has cleared. Two stories. Saturday night with Tom, spooning getting ready to go to sleep. Tom praising me as he does. I felt warmer between my legs. Are you hard enough for a dip? Oh yes! In his way he jumped to it. Sit on me he said. Pinched my nipples and gently poked - bliss near unbearable - no, not near unbearable but near an edge. In the morning he put me on my tummy over his knee so my ass was in the air and lay stroking it so it plumped up blooming like a rose, blooming with trust. We went to Ocean Beach in the aft, people's beach, Mexican families, women dabbling their babies' feet. Second thing, as I was carrying wet clothes back to the basement, stopped at the elevator, there was a young black man also waiting who said very nicely, Going to do a laundry? Going to dry one, I said, it's already wet. Heavy, he said. Yes. I was smiling at him quite shyly because he was luminously beautiful. He had a square bright face luminous with goodness. He waited a moment, we were both feeling the meetings' awkwardness and realness, and then said, I could help you. I said, The elevator goes straight down to the basement, it's right there, so I'm okay, but thank you. Pause. Are you new here or have you been here for a while? I just came today, he said. He must have been the man who approached the desk to check in while I was getting change from Jack. Starbuck's coffee. I'm here now. 26 Depressed. What is it? Tom attacked about the AOL disk, why I don't want to activate it with my credit card number. How he gives me presents and I have a bad energy about them. He gave me a video camera, a laptop, a fur coat. A wrist watch, I add. We are in a field of fear and denial. I am holding back because I don't want to hurt him. I go silent and don't take clear care of myself and so am crushed, depressed, unresolved, and hiding. I pity his shame and humiliation about money and scorn his denials. The video camera never worked. He got it when tourists left it in a phone booth. The wrist watch was an imitation the man in the pawnshop wouldn't take. Tom insisted it was real. The laptop was probably stolen though Tony sold it to him for three hundred dollars. It was password protected, I couldn't get into it. The fur coat was not a thing I would ever wear. Consignment shops wouldn't take it. I doubt he is able to get to the bottom of this hold-out in his denials. He gives me stuff blindly, credulously, needing to believe he is provident. Needing me to play along in his delusion, angry if I don't. His heart-breaking story about his tab at Azi's. Azi charging him 15% but praising him, flattering him, giving him food. Listening to the loneliness in the story hurt my heart. "He says I'm a good man, I can have anything I want in the store." Azi who tries to chisel anyone out of change on a dollar. I'm ashamed to be connected to a man with those connections. I flinch when I hear his lies on the phone. I want to run. Frightened of saying what I think because he will rage and deny. If I want to go on I will have to make a stand, insist, be punished. I have misgivings that his uncleanness is the price I pay for his sexual boldness. It says no. That means 1) be clear about who he is so you don't have shocks and disappointments, 2) be alert and skilful not passive and out of it, 3) be fearless because there's real danger if I'm not scrupulous to defend my truth, 4) something about heart? Keep aiming for open early love for both. Do you mean like managing two children     5) Don't be guilty about any lucid decision. 6) More? Keep track of perfected work, what has happened already. 7) Think in terms of excluded child. That's always the diagnostic     Suppressed child     29 What is that high vibration from the light well, like an alarm someone isn't turning off. Here's Saturday. I've thought to imagine the workroom with the tables and candles. All the candles are lit. Two tables back to back in the center, introduction and conclusion. Two tables side by side on the right, Part I. Cognitive bodies 1. Aboutness, 2. Wide nets. Two more tables on the north end of the west wall, the two perception chapters, 3. Perceiving, 4. What, where and how. On the north wall, to the right of the door, 5. Imagining. Those three are Part II. Presence and simulation. To the left of the door, 6. Representing, which is the lead-in chapter to Part III. Representing and thinking. Along the east wall three tables, 7. Representational effects, 8. Representing and the IPL, 9. Kantian stories. Introduction has one chapter, Part I has two chapters, Part II has three chapters, Part III has four chapters. Being about is a symmetry of five letters each word. Nine chapters the number of a full term. 6. Representing comes at the age of going to school. Now should I imagine a launch rather than a defense? Should I imagine it happening in that room. Should I imagine a goddess presiding. The goddess of persistence, it says. The persistence I've had? Yes. Is what I'll need? No. It is the accomplished goddess. Shining in my corner? Yes. Something I wished to know ... Something I wished to be. The little girl. Think of it as a celebration. A party in the room of the work. Honor the guests. Thank them for coming to see my work. Dress as love woman. A large bunch of flowers. Make it clear that I'm in charge of the event. Is persistence a Greek goddess? Large? Very large, monumental. The years of work, the patient tracking, the willing crashes, the persistence in a true question, the joyful embrace of allies, painful endurance of attack - real attack - the strategy, the poverty, the boredom, the slog, the years of isolation, the days without light. I should go with my own estimate of what I have done. The goddess's. It is much more than a PhD. Will you tell me what it is? It blows the whistle on patriarchy. It is a political act, it calls the bully. It is a fight for my life, and for life and for sanity. It is heroic. Should I think of it as making a stand? No, as celebrating a liberty. Will they be able to see that it's brave? Yes. 2 July Should I complain? I'm afraid to because later I have to confess my complaints. What is the worst of how it has been? - This is a good sound, a singer who knows how to attenuate the ends of her line. She is singing with a flute and matching the sound. I am - what is it - bored, tired, irritated, worn down - with spending so much time without my own kinds of interest. That is probably the way to say it. So much comes at me I can't agree with or don't like. At the same time I want body contact, it seems, because I go after it or am obedient to it nearly always. I can make a list of twenty things I've disliked in a couple of days. (The tone is a righteous complaining tone.) At the same time I feel sorry that he's with someone who dislikes so much of what he is. I am quite horrible in my resentments. I sometimes speak them but I sometimes get him indirectly. I remind him he was a wreck when I met him. I remind him he wasn't clear because he was drinking. I can't help disliking what I do dislike. Speaking it doesn't help and not speaking it doesn't help. I can see that he is what he is and if I am with him it isn't fair to dislike him. At the same time I think his bad decisions will harm me and so I can't not notice them. Alright, this is basic. I blame him for the fact that my heart closes to him. YES. All my complaints say, If you weren't that I could love you. I want to be love and you are stopping me with your foolish ignorant boorish ways. Does anything he does stop me? No. Am I in any danger with him? No. So do you have any advice? No. Am I powerless over this structure? No. Will you lead me? Yes, decision. I should make a decision? Yes. What decision? A decision to be superior. That is a wrong decision?     I should want to be a hobbit like the rest of them? (furious)     NO I work hard to be something worthy     I do want to be better than they are     This is anger       Working hard has brought me wonderful things     Joyce said I should be even more wonderful     no Treat myself as if I'm wonderful already     Okay, I've made a decision to be wonderful and being with unwonderful things threatens my intention     Do I have to do this over and over again     YES I'm stuck     YES Is there more I can do tonight     examine the decision I HAVE to be more wonderful than ordinary people     Though I am not more wonderful than wonderful people       But I AM more wonderful than ordinary people     no I am more wonderful than the kids at school and church     no There is no question that I am     no I am more wonderful than that hideous pregnant cow     NO Is this some sort of saintly theory     no Less wonderful     no Every speck of dust etc is equally wonderful     This acrylic carpet is equally wonderful     Just in the sense that it is     no If I were on acid would I see it     no By wonderful do you mean lovable     no So what do you mean     honest It is what it is     She is what she is - stupid and giving birth to stupidity -and that is wonderful?     no But you are saying there's an attitude that doesn't take it personally and wonders at it     Isn't angry       What am I so angry about     love woman I'm angry she can't do better than that     Rightly so?     no She's trailer park trash    no She's humiliating me     I'm bitter at her     She degrades me socially     She's a fool     no For the sake of sex she's on skid row     I'm deeply ashamed     Is this between me and her     no Is it my womanness     no The ineptitude of my womanness     My anger at her is deserved       Now what     look at the decision It's a decision to be more wonderful than I am?     no Than she is     I have to make up for her inferiority     It is true inferiority     She's trash     Is it on account of the leg     no Will you tell me why she is so trashy     because she was betrayed She chose a trash man     Because it was all she could get     no She thought it was       So now it's over     no But it soon will be     no Will you comment     look at the decision to be more wonderful than her That's the wrong decision     The decision should be to make her more wonderful     no   Can you tell me with one card     the decision to be honest about her and honest about how painful it is to be with her I'm nothing to do with Tom     He's her choice     This is a choice of great bleakness     Is all my anger at Tom really anger at her     Displaced because I don't look at her     So the rest of this visit will be bleak     He becomes irrelevant     no, because he shows her to you I should protect him from these thoughts     It's not about getting an open heart     no If I see her corruption I will have an open heart     If I dislike her I'll have no heart at all     3 It is the morning after a hell night. The hard dyed-blond woman yelling at her kids, shut up, shut up until midnight. Even when it was quiet I lay awake. It's 7:20 now and I'm washed up on the beach among the broken boats. Should I be doing this now, though? Is it a mistake to have come here to do this revision? Do I need it to be a deeper graduation, is that it? I'm in a corner with my contradiction. I can't run away from it. I can't slip into one of the poles and ignore the other. No garden plots left but those last ones standing in water, in shade in the bush behind the house - the thick mosquito bush by the outhouse. For now do nothing. If I run from it I will reconstruct it somewhere else. Joyce is gone, I'm on my own. Be honest about her and be honest about how painful it is to be with her. She is trash but she can't help it. 4 Thursday morning. One more day in chapter 5. Another hard night. Dreaming, waking, waking. Damp. Junk dreams. What should I be thinking about. It's quiet now. The little beepings of alarms have stopped. A pigeon's surprisingly dark solid bumpy tone. I want to talk to myself for a while before work. About what. Louie phoned last night at 10. I told her about the struggle. She said, Who is speaking now? I had called my working self she: she can't stand him. The one who is talking to you, I said. I had noticed the tone: even, intimate, light, smart without trying, smart in the naturalness of the back-and-forth. I had been thinking I wish I could sound like that with Tom, or be with a man with whom I could sound like that. My distance from that tone is the measure of love woman's inadequacy - is that the word - immaturity. The exchange is a pleasure. Respect is assumed. I'm a woman whose twin doesn't have good taste in men; I have a brother-in-law who bores and irritates me. Does that description cut corners? Two ways - it's worse than "bores and irritates," and it is I who do not have good taste in men. I have many kinds of good taste, and appalling taste in men. But it is my taste and I have no other. That's where my heart is. So I'm stuck with it, is that the way to say it? Is that the way to say it? Yes. Could I improve my taste? No. It is my contradiction and I have to be willing to show it. It is like my thin leg. I have to keep bringing it back to this: Tom is what he is but it's not about him. I couldn't pick a better man because I am not better in the part that picks. He's what my heart wanted. He allows me to be home, attached. But this is unpleasant for Tom, who does not want to be picked by anyone's inferiority. He wants his ticket stamped by my choice and by any other thing. There's a constant pressure to tell him he's better than he is. If he did what's needed to earn his own good opinion he would not be what he is. Does love woman need to earn my good opinion?     Can she, and still be health and naturalness?     Is that what's next?     Do I disapprove of her manner with him?     Wrongly?     In what way     she doesn't try to improve him Is she correct in that?     Is there another way to earn my good opinion, a better way?     honesty Love him without lying about him     Like when I said he'd never loved anyone?     When she's honest I can trust her     Okay that helps. But don't read it to him     5 We found a concrete table near the sea wall and behind a thick clump of small palms. The park lighting was a soft fuzzed yellow. A man was sitting on the grass with a large black dog on leash. A Mexican teenager was following a toddler at two paces, letting him lead. People further up the slope had a fire. There were tuna boats with their sterns in a row. Behind us cars rolled slowly and almost silently looking for parking. People walked by in their groups on sidewalks both behind and ahead of us. The sky was lined with a thin batten of soft cloud. It was surprisingly quiet. When the fireworks began we went to sit on the sea wall. Tom kept his eye on a black kid in a yellow jacket who was getting ready to steal his bike. Through the evening I was watching myself to discover what was and could be the relation of attachment and judgment, judgment saying to attachment, Look what you get me into, attachment saying nothing but quietly doing its work of making me well. Is that the way to say it? In relation to Tom, the work of watching was making me silent but more natural, I think, uncompliant with his romantic habit. There is a woman preaching in her room, every morning around eight. 6 Three things. Debbie Rose wrote to thank me for the copy of Leaving the land and said she gives it to her graduate students and talks about it in seminars. Nora offered me a room and more gardening. The blood pressure machine said I'm down twenty points from last time. And then too Tom is showing much of his worst. I am feeling like a child who believes there is no point talking because nothing will be understood, everything will be refused. In fact Tom is not able to handle anything that stresses his opinion of himself. I am holding my midriff tight thinking Yes, go on hanging yourself, come on, keep demonstrating your worst. My crimes so far: I didn't invite him to my defense, I talk about Louie, I said that horrible man and his wife were like him and me (what I said was his rage at them suggests he was feeling the parallel in some part), I wouldn't use my credit card to sign onto AOL through he's dying to go on line, I didn't admire him for getting me software CDs, he nearly got violent when he swatted my seat, I said he's not an intellectual. What he forgot to mention: I said I didn't like him lying to his friends on the phone, I said he has a knot about money, I said that if he works Saturdays he will be bad tempered, writing makes him happy and he won't be able to write, I correct his pronunciation, I don't like his being in debt to Azi. What I haven't said but what he likely feels: I saw that he pissed away a lot of money on junk as soon as he got paid, I believe he is mismanaging his money, I thought lying about the price having changed on the car in the window was grotesque, I don't believe he will get his tooth fixed or organize getting his license or be ready to drive south with me. 8 Oh, yesterday - we worked it through, mostly. Mr Tom was repenting but that by itself was not working. I brought out the cards. How are we doing? Tom says. Ellie feels excluded. And on from there because that was the right place to start. Tom got interested the way he does. Tom wants not to know things about me that he didn't want to know about his mother, it says - that she was angry because Vic didn't want to know those things about her - that she was in conflict, accomplished, tyrannized and objective. The reason he didn't want to know is the reason Tom doesn't. He doesn't want to know that he is in conflict, unaccomplished, a tyrant and unobjective. He is those things because of the degree to which he is unconscious. The best thing I did, the inspired thing, was to ask Tom to talk to and as the little boy in him. The boy is angry. Fuck you, he says (to Tom). Ah, I thought, this is who spends Tom's money. (YES.) Monday morning - my week for chs 7, 8, 9, but have to give another day to 6. Two weeks 'til the day. 9 This morning I have the soprano setting my air. The exact cut of her curly tendrils. I gave myself half an hour of California gardening history. It isn't going well with Tom. The weekend looked like coming through, was coming through, but one day of work snapped him shut. I took a poem downstairs to show him. He blasted it, I walked out. His defenses are under fire, it says. Well, alright, but for the time being I have to take care not to let him harm. So I am embattled, muttering, dark. That already is harm. I wake at night muttering. I need to try to live as if I'm here alone. Don't be sad, little, I'm still here. I am sad though, anxious. White haze over the city. I'm at the fire escape while Maria does my room. There's the post office with its golden eyes and seaweed palms drifting their fronds. - Vacuum cleaner growling, that means she's done. 10 Fast Company this month says Martha Nussbaum is America's foremost philosopher. She is described telling a gathering of CEOs that everyone's dilemma is early love and its early checks and disappointments. Tom knocked on the door at noon yesterday in his own form. His eyes were calm - level grey eyes. I like you when you settle down, I said. 11 Thursday. Am I beginning to be acquainted with my manuscript. There's stuff I don't remember writing. But yes, I probably am. 12 Should I start thinking about the defense every day? Should I introduce it to them as a room? And then use that as a demonstration. 13 Went to Macy's during a break yesterday, ran around the aisles of the women's section twice, once looking right, once left, and bought my work clothes for this term. Green stretch jeans Ralph Lauren, black jeans Liz Claibourne, size 10. Then the Broadway store for new red sneakers. Four pairs of socks from the Goodwill last week. In my closet it's black and olive green. At that moment a man on the third floor bellows like an animal. Shut the fuck up, another man shouts into the light well. There are crashing sounds, the crackle of someone falling against venetian blinds. Yesterday phoning Tom from UCSD I couldn't find the word lifeguard. I wanted to say meet me at the lifeguard's station. I was saying, Meet me at the light ... at the light .... A sensation these days like stepping on soft brakes. I make whatever move it is that says remember this and nothing happens. Something today - I haven't been able to work - that sensation of turning away when I try. I think it is because today I had to buy a padlock and access to a storage locker. I have to start packing up this room. I don't want to put my things away. I don't want to be homeless. I don't want this month to be over and it is. My lamp, my blanket, the CD player with its exquisite voice, the mad people in the light well, the chair I could sit in for hours without hurting. I'm low today - was low yesterday - my heart hurts - I'm very tired - a childish person has me - I don't want to be with him - I don't want to be in this little room without my things - I'm forlorn - at the edge of tears but not going over - will you talk to me? Am I crashing     I'm in a world where no one knows me - now my head hurts - Tom's voice booming for hours, music on and on, the stress of his company - It's an old structure     Because I'm leaving     Because I got close     Will you lead me     shatter the structure I don't have much energy or consciousness       Will you lead me    imagining I should imagine something     generosity Somebody giving to me (tears)     Provision     I'm not going to be able to get through this tonight     YES Extended crash     Do you want to talk to me     slow growth Am I going to be in this kind of pain on and on     More?     passage from difficulty by giving and acting in overview Give to Tom     no to you   Will you tell me what's the core of it     exclusion Can you comfort me   something about decision   Little one do you want to talk to me   YES One card   I want to be part of you Are you pain   YES More   I've been excluded Yes, you have Are you always there   YES You are exhausting   yes Is there something you want to give me   action In relation to something in particular   struggle Do you want some tapioca pudding   yes 15 A horrible weekend. I feel pulped, unrested, sullen, blaming. What do I want to say to horrible Tom. Those black corduroy shorts don't suit you, your legs are too lumpy now for shorts. You have let yourself put on a belly bulge again. How could you have spent so much money on CDs and junk that you got deep in the hole even when you were making piles of money. Your books are ugly, those ugly '70s copies of mediocre analyses of this and that. I hardly have the energy for this. It has been ugly. Dull. The worst was the moment in his room when he ditched me. I was stunned he would do it two weeks before my defense. I couldn't get up and walk out because I knew pain would disable me. It has been horrible     And I haven't been able to make good of it     Did you know it was going to be so horrible     You wanted me to go through it     Why   turn for the better Something is going to be better on account of it     For both of us   no, for you   What   your honesty I'll be honest about what Tom is   no What love woman is     She is health, vitality, etc     But badly attached       Am I annoyed because I haven't gotten even with him   no I want to hurt him     And I don't want to make pain for myself     But am I going to remember what she is     But does she really want him     For the wrong reasons     And the child is the one who suffers     It's the story of Mary and Ed       So is there something I should do now     What's best for the child     What   defend her Defend her attachment     Do I know how   no Teach him     But I don't have the strength at the moment     If I can't teach him is there another way   don't withdraw Stay with her pain       part 3 the golden west volume 25: 2002 may-september work & days: a lifetime journal project